Shared Creation

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Many people face similar problems when they first start to exercise their creative muscles; coming in 2 parts; quality and perceived quality. First of all there is quality is your work technically good enough. The problem of perceived quality is how do you decide that your work is worthy?

I'm not going to face the technical issue of quality. There are metrics for all arts regarding what is good and bad and I'm not going to hit specifics on each one here. What I will say is that if you do not know do two things. First of all spend some time understanding your art, and spend some time testing the water with the many communities that exist on the Internet.  Learning and demonstrating what you can do. Neither of these methods is foolproof, but they are a good start.

What I really want to talk about is a perception of quality. Many people who start off on the creative trail don't really think their work is good enough. This builds a tendency prove to yourself that your work is of high enough quality by embarking on ever more complex and difficult schemes. The need to prove quality can result in creative projects that are simply too big and complex to succeed in a reasonable time frame; and timing is important. If it takes too long to achieve something then becoming disheartened is easy and that can block all future progress, and if that happens a potential talent can be lost.

This raises the question how do you believe in quality and stop things from becoming too complicated?

The answer is to stop and take a look at the real world with fresh eyes. Success in the real world is usually achieved by those things that are accessible and to the point. There's a word for this - it is simplicity. Seriously the biggest success are usually so simple it is unbelievable, and often called genius. 

Here are some examples

One of the most famous T shirt designs of all time - 1 bold word (Relax).

A piece of classic 20th century art - a can of soup.

The biggest show on UK TV - lets hear people sing and judge them.

Keep going - I bet you can come up with plenty of good ideas yourselves.

The point I am trying to make is do not discard an idea, an image, or a piece of prose because it seems too simple to be worthy, professional or special. Try instead to see if your work is striking, eye-catching or imaginative. The key to success is not impossible complexity. It is something that has a good blend of simplicity and originality. 

Don't be blighted by rejecting the something that may seem basic. Revel in its simplicity, because if it connects to you, it probably does the same to someone else.

Break the fear of simplicity and hopefully success will follow.