Finding Freedom in Limitations

We recently stumbled upon the book Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon on a family outing to Barnes & Noble. This short book has been curated down to a non-stop creative kick in the face.  As I was reading, I had to fight the urge to keep turning pages and slow down to truly mediate on the message. Additionally, I was faced with the difficult situation of electing what not to highlight on each page.

Out of the numerous highlighted passages, I want to pick one out of a hat and share my impression.

“Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities. The idea the that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying.”

– Steal Like an Artist

“You have complete freedom!” is the most common response I get from clients when I ask what they are looking for in their logo. I used to love that answer, being able to do whatever I wanted seemed like the key ingredient to deliver the perfect logo. But through experience, I have learned: “complete freedom” is the key to a run-of-the-mill product.

We have all heard it said many times: “Think outside the box”. What we don’t think about is, in order to think outside the box we have to get inside it first. We need to ask for the walls, ask for the limitations to work within. In creativity, limitations mean freedom. When we are working within the right limitations we can produce our best work.

I challenge you to see your limitations as creative freedom to work within, not as a barrier keeping you from creating. As Austin says in Steal Like an Artist: “Don’t make excuses for not working–make things with the time, space, and materials you have, right now.”

You think you have great friends?

This time last year we visited the Blue Dome Arts Festival in downtown Tulsa. We watched some bands, grabbed some food, and shopped around all the artist’s booths set up in the streets. One thing I didn’t do was think, “Next year, I’m going to have a booth here.” In fact, I didn’t even know that I would start Darby & Dash five months later.

But, here we are, one year later and we did set up at Blue Dome and I would first like to say; I have the best friends and family in the world! Let me explain.

I had a vision of what I wanted my booth to look like but unfortunately I do not have all the skills to complete it on my own. One of the ideas was a small bar height counter that would sit in the middle of the booth, but because I drive a Scion XB and not the stereotypical Oklahoman F150, the cabinet would also have to be collapsible for storage and transport. Duncan was up for the challenge, and after working many hours on his off days and before his scheduled shifts at his day job he delivered even better than I had imagined.

Jess has been helping me with all of the photography of the products from the beginning and the photos are too good not to use in a dominate way. So I envisioned a large banner that covered the entire back wall of the tent and smaller poster shots running down the sides. Luckily, my Grandpa runs A Better Sign Co. and was able to make all the foam board posters and the banner on a short deadline.

Even more bragging on how awesome my friends are, most of the models are all friends from our CityChurch community group.

The booth is almost complete with one major piece missing, something to hang the clothes on. You know, the whole reason for the booth. Duncan is back to work on this one, building all of the racks in two days. Now we are ready.

This is all just the weeks leading up to the festival. 6 AM Friday morning, Duncan and I head downtown and set up the booth which took us until 11 AM when people started showing up. At 1 PM, Duncan was replaced by Jess so he could go work a full shift at his day job. Sarah joined later to finish out the night after getting off. A 15 hour day to start the weekend.

This was the case for the entire three day festival, we all worked 12 to 15 hour days either at the festival or split with day jobs. Like I said, I have the best friends in the world. Over all, the festival was a huge success, we sold tons of product, made new connections, and the counter that Duncan built was so good he was hired by one of our booth neighbors to build her one. Plus, a huge thank you to all of our friends who came out to show support!

Sunday, after the festival closed and we spent a couple more hours tearing down, Duncan and I went out on a man date since the girls left us earlier in the day for a wedding. Perfect ending to a long and exhausting weekend.

Geek Tattoo

I’ve been using Photoshop and the entire Adobe Creative Suite for 8 years. Photoshop CS was given to me by my youth pastor in 7th grade, but the first version I purchased on my own was CS2. To commemorate the start of my life as a graphic designer I decided to get a tattoo. One that illustrates my roots, my passion, and my personality. I felt the feather that branded that first copy of Photoshop to arrive at my door step, does just that. The complete image depicts the starting point, the color fading with translucent gradients conveys my appetite for art, and the feather personifies my free spirit. I’ve been wanting to get this tattoo for some time now and I couldn’t be more elated with the way it turned out.

Asking the right questions.

Do you like this Shirt?

That’s the question I asked at least 8 different people before sending it off to the printer. I should have followed up with “Do you see anything wrong with it?” but because no one was looking for it, no one saw it. Even after the printer prepared the file, looked at each shirt during printing, and boxed them up, no one saw it. Multiple people wearing it in public, showing it off, no one saw it. I’m sure, until now, even you didn’t see it. After dropping the shirts off at some stores, I get the following email…

Gentlemen! Are you kidding me, how did no one see that… it’s “el” instead of “le” and it’s singular instead of plural!

No one saw it because no one was looking. If you want the right answers you have to ask the right questions. Spell Check couldn’t hurt either. Lesson Learned.

Corrected Hunger Games Shirt

 

You can purchase the (corrected) shirt HERE!

Do you have any experiences with not asking the right questions?