There are five stages to my process and I want to write about each of them. I’ve named them: Dream Phase, Outer Form, Sample, Out into the World, The Sustainable Business. How did I arrive at 5 stages? The primary influence is my work in product and brand development, which has always had a focus on and operation within OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) based, component-driven manufacturing as the key mover in the process.
The first step, ‘Dream Phase’, is the creation of the original concept. ‘Sample’, which is step 3, concerns things that, if we end there, should be considered ‘projects’, essentially one-off creations that aren’t necessarily intended to scale up into multiples. Projects are, from my perspective, what most people who have the desire to create ought to shoot for. ‘Sustainable Business’, the end of the scale, is the living breathing entity that people interact with in real life, sometimes known as a company. Again, those endpoints reflect the reality of how my own creativity intersects with my entrepreneurial perspective and working style. Reflecting on these ideas about the process of bringing something into the world, I’m left with the impression that not many people think about what the beginning and end of their own creative process looks like. That needs to change. Why?
Imagine the total possibility of your creativity is a map. Your process is like hiking along a path on that map, with two points a certain distance from one another, start to finish. You can go in all sorts of directions but ultimately you want to arrive at your destination, which is the thing existing in the world. Nobody knows the terrain of this map exactly, but it’ll define how easy or difficult this path is or if you’ll actually enjoy traversing it. Some people work in a straight line, others meander and get lost in the ‘woods’ forever. Is getting from the beginning to the end the most important thing? It can be. Is doing it as fast as possible important? Some people think so. The more you hike and explore your map of creativity, the more experience and familiarity you get with the terrain, the easier it becomes to navigate and set out on new journeys over and over again. What seemed difficult becomes easier and what seems out of reach eventually becomes an interesting possibility. Creativity is a very funny thing. There’s nothing that says the map can’t grow and shrink or change shape as you walk it. Creativity is dynamic not just in its appearance but also in its depth, scale, and dimensionality. This makes it all the more interesting.
I don’t mean to downplay the importance of managing everyday life’s realities. Most of us barely have time to really catch a breath and just process it all, let alone get through that and step into the next stage of considering what we might want to possibly create. Out in the world, we get exposed to a lot of thought (social media, mainstream news, friends, etc.) that promotes the idea of taking on ‘side-hustles’ and other similar arrangements that often just mean ‘more work’ further burdening our psyches as we consider the idea. It can be awfully paralyzing when it feels like the outcome of going on this journey has to do the job of validating our dreams and the ups and downs of the journey we took in making them real. The stakes never should be that high. Exploring our personal map of creativity has to be a possibility for everyone. From my perspective, making and building is an important human function and in this particular connected world, we need to be able to build things for ourselves. Why? To enjoy completing the circle of imagination to creation and engaging in the full process of self translation and transmutation. I think it’s one of our defining traits as humans.
Going back to the idea of sharing my sequence, I think breaking it down will reveal some useful insight that someone else could use to empower their own creative journey. Could it be a useful experiential navigational tool for someone else walking along the terrain of their own map? Does my personally structured way to understand creativity, project work, and product creation have the possibility of being enabling for those working through the same thing? It’s worth a try! So, how do I think about bringing something into the world? Let’s dive into the 5 stages of my creative process that give me both a sense of progress as well as offer clear progress points.
-PB