ANgiE tAYLoR 🧷

Tag: freelancer

  • Creative Constipation:

    Creative Constipation:

    I was describing a friend ofWaiting for ideas mine as suffering from creative constipation recently. It’s a common complaint, many designers suffer from it and it can be the result of multifarious causes; tight deadlines, the distractions of every-day life, worrying about friends and families, an untidy desk. All of these have been my obstructions at one time or another, preventing my creative juices from running freely.

    Fear of failure is the main culprit though, not just failure in the eyes of others but more importantly, failure to oneself. As a creative I’m cursed by the desire to create, it’s a necessary ablution – required to purge my brain of the incessant busy-ness it experiences on a daily basis. I have important things to say, I need to communicate!

    But it’s not just a simple case of drawing, designing or writing just any-old-thing, it has to be good, to mean something, to make sense and, most importantly, to inspire and evoke reaction. This pressure I place upon myself is enormous, it’s enough to make me seize up into a foetal ball – like a anally-retentive hedgehog.

    Luckily I’ve discovered ways of dealing with this potentially crippling condition. When  a bad case of CC kicks in, the natural response is to sit in front of a computer screen in a frozen state of panic, waiting for that elusive “idea” to formulate. This will never happen. OK, I lied, it might happen but chances are that, if it does, it will be a crappy idea.

    In order to free your mind and to come up with the best ideas you just need to get working. If you are a writer, just start writing! Any old rubbish that comes to your mind will do, whether it’s related to the subject or not. The exercise of writing will free you up and you’ll find that eventually you will start to incorporate the subject at hand and little gems will appear amongst the sentences. Once this happens, go over it again, delete the rubbish, elaborate on the good stuff and craft it into something positive.

    If you’re a designer or artist, get away from the computer! Pick up  a sketchbook and start drawing. If you can’t draw then go out and take some photographs or even Google images for inspiration by typing in key words. Drag what you find into a a document to create a mood board (I use Curio for this as it maintains links to the original files).

    If you’re working on a design think about the individual components separately as this can be less intimidating than thinking about the job as one, huge, insurmountable project. Spend an hour playing with fonts, not just fonts on your computer but looking around at shop signs, magazines, anywhere you see type. Tracing letter-forms from magazines can be a great way of “feeling” a font instead of just liking it. Spend another hour with some paint, playing with it, experimenting to find color combinations that please you or convey the feeling you want to get across.

    From these experiments your ideas will grow, some will be awful but elements will shine through that you can use in the current, or future projects. The ideal is find time to do creative exercises like these on a regular basis, even when there’s no deadline. Modern life and work pressures make this very difficult but a good employer knows that to get the best out of creative talent, employees need inspiration and time for experimentation. Most creative agencies make sure their staff are looked after fairly well with generous time off (compared to other industries) and a good working environment. (Why do you think most production companies have fridges full of wholesome food, drinks and the odd bit of alcohol?) 🙂

    If you’re a freelancer, remember that you are your own employer so don’t be too hard on yourself. Allow time for experimentation and inspiration. Avoid stress, look after yourself and don’t forget to have the odd bit of fun. Finally, once the ideas start coming, enjoy it but don’t get too cocky or over-confident. You want to be freed up by these exercises but not to the extent where you’re producing nothing but a vast quantity of digital diarrhea!

    Angie’s track of the day – Free Your Mind – En Vogue

  • Creative Video Workflow

    Angie TaylorI’m busy preparing to leave on a mammoth journey to San Fransisco to speak at the Macworld 2010 conference for the first time.

    I’ll be talking about production workflow, specifically broadcast production as that’s where I spent 12 years of my life freelancing as a motion graphic designer/ animator.

    I’ll also share some of the challenges I’ve faced in the transition from designer to creative director, and my methods for overcoming those hurdles.

    The talk is part of the users conference (session code: US964) and is titled “Creative Video Workflow – From Storyboard to Completion“. It’s taking place on Friday February 12th, between 15:00  – 16:15.

    Of course I’ll be talking about the software I use in my everday work, and will share some top tips and tricks. But my main focus will be on my creative processes. How do I come up with ideas? What do I do to make sure my skills are up to date? How to I collaborate with others and manage remote working?

    If you’re interested in finding out more use the priority code TWEETMW when you register to get a $15 Expo pass or 15% off of any conference package. Onsite expo passes are $45, so it’s a great deal!

    I hope to see you there!

  • Decoupling Production

    I’m interested in the trend of decoupling going on in the world of TV and film production companies. It’s the world that I used to live in so it’s close to my heart. Decoupling refers to the process of reducing costs to the client by outsourcing some of the work to freelancers or external services, rather than providing them in house. Decoupling offers big opportunities to everyone in our industry from company directors to freelancers and runners, if we can be brave enough to embrace it.

    Increasingly, over the past 20 years, production companies have been expected to be flexible, pressurised to increase their skills, enabling them to deliver every possible service and format to their clients. This entails increasing staff to cover all areas of production, extending the capabilities of the company so they can also generate content for new and emerging mediums (web, mobile devices, games etc). The result is increased costs due to wages and also investment in bigger studio spaces.

    The inevitable has happened, the work that was plentiful during these times of development has somewhat dried up. Production companies are competing even harder for the same jobs and clients find it harder to differentiate between companies as they all offer essentially the same services. Frustrated freelancers who weren’t finding the right amount of work (or satisfaction from it) started to create their own collectives which for a while injected some new life into the industry but they too have suffered from what I call the “jack of all trades syndrome”. Feeling that they must offer all services in-house, often stretching the capabilities of their employees and making the work suffer as a result.

    Of course there are pros and cons with everything in life, this is no exception. On a positive note, decoupling could provide the opportunity to return to an industry where craft specialization matters. Instead of all production companies offering essentially the same services and competing for every scrap of work, each could become king of a particular area, passing work onto other companies when the work is more suited to their specific skill-field. A certain amount of this already goes on within Soho but I really believe this could be extended. It would improve the quality of work, employee morale and confidence within individual companies.

    By letting some of their in house designers go and instead using freelancers, companies could open up to diversity, calling on different specialist skills appropriate for each job. It could create healthy competition between freelance creatives but also opportunity to create alliances and a network for swapping skills. In house designers can sometimes find it hard to maintain focus and motivation, so those more suited to a freelance lifestyle could benefit greatly here.

    However, I worked as a freelancer in the industry for over 12 years so I know, only too well the challenges that can be faced. Remote working is not easy, you need to be motivated, focused, pro-active and willing to network. Ideas can be harder to develop on your own, it’s amazing how much creative development goes on during breaks around the coffee machine or meetings in the pub after work for production companies. Get rid of your in house team and you risk losing the teamwork that’s so valuable for the development of ideas and a sense of company identity. It can also be hard to find the right people at the right time to work on a production, they may be busy with another company.

    On the whole though I see decoupling as an exciting prospect. It increases the unknown to the equation. Risk and uncertainty can be scary but embrace them and you often find new exciting challenges that, combined with a bit of initiative, can be the impetus to creativity in it’s truest sense. I’d love to hear the thoughts of other design professionals about the whole debate associated with decoupling, and also any stories about the challenges associated with remote working. What are these difficulties and how can we find ways of making it work?