Insights: The art of creative decision-making

My take on it and a look into London Design Festival

Hi,

It’s been quite a September - launching a project I’ve been working on through the whole summer and seeing it come to life so gracefully (thanks to all teams). I said congrats to my colleague on a project launch day, adding, “We should be proud of all the decisions we’ve made.” Which made me reflect on how I work and, mostly, how I make creative decisions.

During the last year, I have had quite a few big personal and client projects that required many of those to be made - from deciding on the idea, strategy, creative direction, and budget to the small things, such as if the colour, font, text, photo edit, or placement of something is right. Decisions that remain, and will ultimately make that “big picture” interesting, curious, and fun.

From the outside, especially before you can, making creative decisions seems like a fun and playful activity when you can finally embrace your whole creative self (which is partly that). Yet when you need to make many, if not all, and in a short time, you must have some strategies to work with to avoid decision fatigue. I love the below illustration from The Decision Lab, created by versus the machines, which builds on something my first manager ever told me “the more decisions you make, the more tired you will get, so make as many little ones as you can before the next morning, as the things you will wear tomorrow to what to prep for breakfast.”

Reflecting on it through my lens, I realised that I am 50/50. Mostly I ride on my gut feeling, but then always check it towards the strategic direction.

Something I make my creative decisions towards could look like this:

Gut Feeling

• Make a pause. Leave the moment of decision-making (even for a water break). One idea sticks most and keeps coming back to my mind - that’s the one.

• It simply feels right and exciting (you don’t always need to have the reasons why.)

• Take it with a pinch of salt; the real outcome will only be real once it’s in front of the audience.

• If it excites me, it will excite someone else too, and on the opposite, if it makes me feel nothing, most likely, others will feel the same nothingness.

Strategic

• Step back - see the bigger picture, think about the other details, and how it connects back to it all, to the big idea.

• Put yourself into the seat of the receiver - will it connect to the people I want to reach? Will they understand, appreciate, connect?

• Is it personal - does it connect to the cause - a person or a brand this decision is made for?

• Is it understandable? Does it communicate and express what I want to?

• Are there any risks that can cause a crisis? If so, am I ready to be responsible for it? (being bold and brave matters, but one has to be prepared to take ownership even if it can cause or trigger something negative.) 

• Is it relevant now, either at this time in culture or for this specific happening?

What I have learned is that strategy is safe, and your gut feeling is trainable. Strategy is what’s left in your bucket at the end of the day, and the gut feeling weakens the more decisions you make. You need to treat it with love and respect and realise that if you made some decisions based on your gut feeling and they ended well, it will boost your confidence, and you can trust it more the next time. It’s like a muscle, and a very special one. Some of the best creative directors I know say sometimes, “I just got this feeling; we should do it this way.”

Creative decision-making is both rational (strategy) and irrational (gut feeling), sometimes one more or the other, depending on the goal.

This topic came to my mind after seeing one of the latest projects that I creative led coming to life: the Atelier100 Showroom we had during the London Design Festival. A project like this requires so many decisions; it would be curious to list all of them the whole team has made.

Atelier100 Showroom durind LDF 2023 I was talking about, was named as one of London Design Festival highlights by Monocle and Financial Times. Photos by Taran Wilkhu. Our new Drop02 is ready to pre-ordered.

I am talking about the showroom, and sharing some other insights about London Design Festival on our Instagram, in stories highlights (LDF 2023).

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Do you have any insights on creative decision-making? I’d love to hear that!

Until the next one,

Auste