These days to get the most bang for your marketing dollars you need outstanding creative to build and grow your brand. If you think you can get by with lackluster, safe design and stale, expected language you can count on being lost in the channel. The bar is high for the creative articulation of your brand. Really high. Sky high. Why? Because consumers and users have a sophisticated sense of what is “good.” Because the tools of creativity are in everyone’s hands, using baseline creative signifies your not in touch with where the space is today. Creativity and brand go hand in hand. It’s not frosting. It is the essence of your communications and the real reason people engage with you.

You can not afford to be safe. You can not afford to do what everyone else is doing. You can not be a “me-too” brand because in this marketplace your customers can go right to the first-mover, the best-of-class brand for whatever they want. The marketplace flattening out has made incredible opportunities for brands to compete up and down the channels. It is so easy for a potential customer to see their options that if they don’t like what they see, if the brand doesn’t convey the quality and strengths they offer, the customer can easily move on. It takes a whole lot of word-of-mouth to overcome bad creativity in the marketplace. It can be done but do you really want to work that hard?

Get a good creative strategy, one that lays out a clear vision for your brand. Then work with great creative people to bring it to life in a way that really makes your brand get the attention it deserves. Go all in. That’s when you win with creative.

I have always worked for others who understood that having the best tools, investing in your craft and not skimping on what you need to get your work done always pays off. Whether it’s computer equipment or pens and paper, it’s always the same. Cheap tools mean more time and hassle later on.

I have not always followed this principle. I have learned the hard way that buying a used Mac that is already is behind in processing speed is never a savings. That getting ugly but inexpensive office furniture does not make me happy to sit in my office. That sticky notes that are not Post-it® Notes are worthless.

So get the best equipment. Do yourself a favor and get what you need. But I am not advocating extravagance. A great pen is great. You don’t necessarily need the most expensive pen out there. Get the right kind of paper for your printer. It makes a difference. And understand what tools are most important to you and which are less critical. Let that drive your buying decisions. Every purchase is an investment so put your money where you will get the best ROI. What’s my most important tool? It’s a tie between my MacBook Pro and my chair. I’m on both all day every day. That warrants investment.

A core part of my design training was to understand and love problems. Problems demand design. Since there are always problems, there will always be a demand for designers because our purpose is to create solutions to problems, especially solutions that are beautiful and smart.

I keep a notebook of problems. I got this idea from ThinkerToys, one of my favorite books on creative thinking and problem solving. I write down what problems I see, what problems I hear about and then I write out as many ideas as possible to solve the problem. I go for 40 (that’s the length of my notebook page).

Besides forcing me to think more broadly, this exercise gives me a tremendous amount of hope. Problems typically overwhelm and stress us out. They are depressing and spur fear. Getting stuck in a problem is the worst thing that can happen. When we are stuck we can’t move forward. Designers know that when you can’t move forward you can always move sideways. Design thinking is about taking a different direction to solve the problem, forcing yourself not to take the same direction but to move in the least expected one. That’s where the I find the wiggle room. In the wiggle room is where we find the solutions.

I love the focus on design solutions coming out of India. I was very inspired by my trip to India and the amazing design solutions I saw. In a country, much like the US, where the problems seem overwhelming and the imbalances seem extreme, I saw so many situations where design thinking, design craft and creativity provided to opening to change. That’s the beauty of embracing problems. When we embrace them, we think like a designer and we make design valuable.

I’ve been looking for creative truths, principles which make the creative process, design thinking and visualization effective. Creative truths often overlap with other philosophical principals for good business, spirituality, sports, gardening or relationships. I like that these high level thoughts and ideas can be applied directly to doing better work, creating valuable stuff and making in general. Creation, as a process, underlies so much of what makes us happy as human beings.

So now I’m recreating my professional life by creating a new vision for my work. The new vision includes many principles and pieces selected from things I am good at, things I like, things people want and what comes my way. This creative process, like designing a website or a identity, has a general trajectory, but once it starts it gains natural momentum and moves forward organically. Agility and flexibility, openness and awareness to the process is great, but so is keeping focused on the core objective. My core objective is to create and build a business focused on bringing clarity and creativity to people and organizations lost in vagueness, to get better work and better results. It’s so easy to get lost in the details or overwhelmed by the vision. Everyone needs an approach to seeing what they’ve been missing, what’s getting overlooked and what desperately needs attention.

I know because that’s my story too. I’m very comfortable going a million miles on hour on the same road every day. There is security following the familiar path, until that path turns circular and we don’t get to see something new, nor do we get to see what we are missing. So, I hopped off my path and am striking out on a new one. Like any new venture, the unknown outweighs everything else. But the unknown can be full of fun surprises. I’m looking forward to building surprises for myself.

Early advice. Simple and effective. Difficult to follow for workaholics and curious types.

Do it.

Simplicity is so much more direct, clear and graspable. Perhaps that’s why it is such a successful approach to design. When I think of Shaker furniture and Agnes Martin and I see the beauty of simplicity. I know how difficult it can be to achieve, which is all the more reason to strive for it.

Less. Remember less, not more.

Good work always prevails. There are many things that make a creative person successful but the one truth that is irrevocable is that we are judged by our work. We make things. Our creative output, art, music, dance, poetry, is the result of our lifetime of experiences, our craft and skills, influences of the culture and the marketplace and our own motivations. Our efforts, as such, culminate in the external pieces we create. Without that tangible creative output we are left with the conceptual meanderings of our mind.

Creative output is not something that we do as an aside. It is the core of the creative process and it often comes from the very center of our being. The creative process often leaves us vulnerable. It opens us up to criticism and judgement by those whose opinion we value and those whose opinions are meaningless. In either case, what a creative person needs to focus on is creating work. Only after we’ve made something do we actually have an opportunity to evaluate and critique our own work. Create/evaluate; creative/evaluate; on and on it goes. I often ascribe to the “quantity theory” of creation to counteract my own fears about criticism and judgement. By making, I move forward. I focus on the making and evaluate afterwards. After all, it’s the work that counts.

I used to think this quote came from John Cage’s 10 Rules for Students and Teachers. However, I learned from Brain Pickings that they really came from Sister Corita Kent. I had this list of 10 Rules on the bulletin board above my desk for over five years and from it I learned some of the best approaches to being creative I have ever read. The rules are:

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher — pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined — this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything — it might come in handy later.

 I always found the first rule to be one of the best. It encouraged me to accept my current situation until I could trust it no more. I learned and grew a lot that way. I found opportunities and I rose above challenges. Trust became the barometer for change—not my own internal tidal waves of interpretation and expectation. I learned that creativity is an internal perspective that can be applied no matter where I have landed. All I have to do is try.

Creativity happens in situations and environments in which everyone can take risks, fail, experiment and try new things. Without trust, true creation is warped by hidden motives and agendas. If one can’t take risks, there is no possibility to construct something never seen before.

Aggression is antithetical to creativity. Dominance squashes experimentation.

I’ve never understood why someone would use destructive actions in a process or situation in which we were trying to construct something. It seems counter-productive to me. And immature. True creativity requires maturity to handle the intensity and passion that accompany making something new.

We all learn the hard way that everyone is replaceable. Everything is transitory. Be present wherever you are, whenever that is. Make the moment count.

Fragment of sculpture by Rodin.