Dangerous Creativity

Last week, I went on a twisting, turning link following journey, and ended up on Hugs for Monsters, a showcase for the work and thoughts of visual artist Joe Lifrieri. His site design is refreshing and charming, but it was a post on branding for the social web that sent my imagination scribbling.

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Look for the darkspots: Seek out the shadowed corners of your life, your psyche, your worldview. Poke around in the crawl spaces. What hasn’t been exposed to light? What hasn’t been revealed? What are you or others afraid to look at? Shadows do hide horrors at times, but they also hide forgotten treasures, history, hope and beauty.

Don’t dismiss the difficult: If an idea seems too dangerous or too difficult to approach, don’t automatically turn away. Stop and consider it a while. What makes it difficult? Why do you want to avoid it? Are the reasons valid? Are there ways around the dangers?

Don’t gut it: It’s tempting to slice and dice dangerous ideas, and you can indeed water one down so it is safer, more commercial, more acceptable. Of course it will also be empty, meaningless, and bland. Better to *start* with a safe idea, than to drain the life power out of a dangerous one.

Stay Risk Aware: Once you’ve identified the risks, and decided to go forward anyway, stay aware and alert. Forgetting the dangers means you can be blindsided by them, and stopped dead in your creative tracks. Staying aware also keeps you energized, attentive, focused - and reduces the temptation to water things down. As the project becomes more familiar, it will start to feel more safe.

It isn’t safe. that’s the point! Don’t forget it.

Related:

Dangerous Creativity: Tackling “Too Difficult” Ideas.