Make Things or Make Money

You must choose.

In 2011 I was working for a design agency. We did creative work for clients. I’ve worked for a handful of agencies since I graduated from college in 2006. I’ve also worked many years as a freelancer. Whether I’ve worked through an agency or on my own, my entire creative career up to that point had been what most designers end up doing with their careers: working for clients.

Then something changed. A small group of us at the design agency in 2011 decided to conjure up a product out of thin air and pitch it to a major motion picture studio. It was still client work yes, but something felt entirely different. We locked ourselves in a room created a concept for an interactive mobile and web game that people could play together all over the world. And it was good. We didn’t end up landing the project but a small agency in the Midwest with no experience creating mobile apps made a big impression on a major company in Hollywood. And we almost got it. We were very close.

What felt entirely different about those several weeks was that we had a sense of creative freedom that I’ve never experienced before working for clients. It was creativity in its purest sense. Now, some might argue that creativity is strengthened by constraint and clients certainly deliver on that. But we still had constraints. In one sense it was no different than if this major motion picture had come to us asking for a project. We were still working for a client and still considering their audience.

The difference was that we were not burdened by making the client happy. Because the client knew nothing about us and we had nothing to lose, it allowed us to strip away that burden and simply make up something that we thought would be fun. We essentially created something that we wanted. It felt like we were eliminating the middle man and going straight to the consumers, people like us who love going to the movies.

I’ve lately struggled through the idea that if I simply create something for myself then perhaps I am just being selfish. But I’m not sure that is the case anymore. Is it selfish to create something that you want to use (without compromising) and then to share that with the world, hoping that others might find meaning in that thing as well? Maybe that is less selfish than adhering to a client’s wishes even when you know you are doing mediocre creative work. Why? Because when you really break it down you are probably doing it because of money.

Next post: Money.

When you think about it, everything really comes down to money. I would argue that money drives nearly every decision when it comes to business. It’s so common that we think this is perfectly normal but I’m not so sure it is. Those of us doing creative work are in this weird mashup environment where money and art collide. And money usually wins. I’ll look at two companies and explore how they balance art and money and how that has led to all of their success: Pixar and Apple.