Reboot
We have a resident chipmunk. He loves to torment the cats.
When I re-landscaped our little back yard, I unintentionally cut off one of Mr. Chipmunk’s tunnel entrances.
One day last summer, I was reading on the patio when I heard a soft clicking sound. I looked up to see one of the river stones in the garden bumping up and down, seemingly of its own accord.
A little investigation showed that Mr. Chipmunk was working to break through the landscaping fabric under the stones.
I moved the rocks and cut a hole in the fabric for him.
But, it turns out Mr. Chipmunk no longer cares for that particular portal. Why? He shows up too well against these new gray stones around his old haunt. Before, he blended into the conveniently chipmunk-colored mulch of the yard. Now, when he stands on the rocks, he’s a clear target for the owls, hawks, cats and other predators in the woods where we live.
Today, instead of popping up in the center of stone garden, he emerges from under the shaggy bamboo and runs along weathered timbers, blending in with the wood and skirting the enter rock garden to get to his foraging territory.
Mr. Chipmunk met an obstacle and, rather than forging stubbornly ahead, returned to the basics of camouflage and cover.
Instinct, right?
This week, I hit what from a distance seemed to be a mental speed bump but grew into a brick wall as I sped forward and crashed into it.
In the midst of multiple complex and fast-moving branding projects, I suddenly froze up. After a morning spent writing and deleting sentences, scribbling on whiteboards and consuming cup after cup of black coffee, I surrendered to the wall.
In frustration, I turned to the fundamental texts that have shaped my approach and ethic in brand development and design. Books like Naomi Klein’s No Logo, John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity and Denise Lee Yohn’s What Great Brands Do.
We train hard in the fundamentals so that they become second nature. Whether that’s music or art theory, the basics of an instrument, acting or dance training, we commit hard so that we can lean on it later without effort.
What I’ve found over the years, though, is that when we’re stuck and return to the fundamentals, we’re typically very surprised. It’s almost like learning concepts completely from scratch. The old standards suddenly seem new and fresh again, and we see what we already practice in a different light.
Returning to these fundamental texts, I began to reorganize some of the fundamental principles I work from.
I also remembered the fundamental principle of Outer Voice, which is to help artists connect with audiences in a meaningful way.
These fundamental principles aren’t new, but they are elemental. These are five building blocks that underlay every single practice, from the arts to business management.
Be Grounded
In her book What Great Brands Do, Denise Lee Yohn says “Great brands start inside.” An organization’s culture is tightly intertwined with its ability to be authentic and live up to its mission. Mission must reflect values, and values must be embodied by the organization.
At an organizational level, this is what Yohn calls the “head+hearts+hands and feet problem.” She says that for people in an organization or group to truly “understand, embrace, and deliver your brand, they need to know its values in their heads, feel inspired by them in their hearts, and then put them into action with their hands and feet.”
I firmly believe this applies on the individual level for artists. Early on in Outer Voice, I wrote about the importance of having a clear mission and set of values as an artist. It may sound irrelevant or business-y, but it’s actually deeply effective at keeping us on track.
My personal mission and values become the litmus test for the work I create, the groups I choose to associate with, and my relationship to my work and its place in the world.
For instance, if one of my values is that inclusion and equity is crucially necessary in my community, then I will look at the makeup of artists in group shows or events I’m invited or hope to be a part of. I’ll look at who owns the venues and who is in positions of power. If they don’t align with my values, will I still join the show? Will I actively try to change the makeup of the group? Will I start my own group?
Also, testing new ideas and opportunities against your mission and values presents opportunities to evolve and shape your work. If I become too laser-focused on one specific type of work because I adhere too concretely to the letter of my mission over its spirit, then I may lose beautiful chances to explore other rewarding, important avenues.
Remember Aesop’s story of the oak and the reed. The oak was strong and grounded, but rigid. It broke in the storm. But the reed bent and didn’t break. Fundamentals must be embodied with flexibility.
2. Be Simple
Designer and smart guy John Maeda wrote a whole book about this. The Laws of Simplicity is an elegant, slim and … simple … tome dedicated to ways product design, information, processes, nearly anything can be made more simple.
Why simple? Our lives and minds are cluttered. We live in a blitzkrieg of targeted ads, social media scrolls, hysterical news reporting, and a menu of entertainment options that it would take a lifetime to fully take in.
Simplicity, like silence, creates space. Space to think, to work.
Maeda’s second law of simplicity is “organize.” He breaks organizing down into what he calls SLIP: Sort, Label, Integrate, Prioritize.
When I read that this week, I immediately looked at one of the projects I was stuck on and then sorted and labeled all of its main building blocks (I wrote them all on a dry-erase board, but this works well with post-its too). By doing so, I was able to integrate them, understanding their relationships and eliminating redundancy. Then I prioritized them.
Suddenly, I saw a new pathway through what was previously a jumbled pile of idea rubble.
We can simplify our lifestyles and our practices, honing them to the essentials. In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown notes that by choosing a mentality of “less but better,” we free our minds and focus to devote incredible energy to important things.
Simplifying helps us create better work by creating space in our minds and in our processes.
3. Be Playful
As artists, we’re naturally playful (at least most of us). Our work is born in play.
Often, as our practices grow into professions, our playfulness gradually gives way to a new mindset — one driven by competition, recognition, money, and deadlines. This is a much less fun place to be in.
In 2012, it drove me to stop pursuing film and television acting. After a decade of minor success and frustrating near-misses, I found myself self-obsessed, resentful, and trapped in a loop of self-pity and resentment. The joy was gone. So I stopped doing it.
Instead, I went back to playing. In the rehearsal room with theatre dybbuk and in classes with Steppenwolf West, I rediscovered why I loved acting. It wasn’t about having the right representation, booking the right gigs, hitting the gym, whitening the teeth, or pilot season. It was about play. Play, and storytelling, and real human connection.
In Essentialism, McKeown points out that:
“We are built to play and built through play. When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality … Play expands our minds in ways that allow us to explore: to germinate new ideas or see old ideas in a new light. It makes us more inquisitive, more attuned to novelty, more engaged.”
Or, as a mentor used to say to me, “If it ain’t fun, why are you doing it?”
4. Be Unconventional
Again, as artists, this is kind of our bag. Very few of us go into the arts to try to fit in with the crowd. That’s why they invented high school football.
But being unconventional is about more than being “artistic.” It’s about choosing not to follow trends, whether they’re in pop culture or the art world. It’s about examining how we interact with social media and what impact it has on our mental and emotional health. It’s about choosing not to chase algorithms, not to churn out content for content’s sake, not to desperately reach for easy options and cure-alls.
Sometimes, being unconventional is about being brave enough to stop doing something. Having the courage to seek out nuance in dialogue, to slow things down, to press pause.
Being unconventional requires having a beginner’s mind — a mind open to all options and all possibilities, never turning something away simply for being different, outside our normal parameters, or unpopular.
If we hold to our mission and values, we can embrace the new responsibly. We can find those new perspectives and fresh ideas that some part of our brain is always afraid will disappear.
5. Be Balanced
The most rewarding branding work that I do is with individuals who are starting a new venture or fine-tuning an existing one. They’re typically at a place in their lives where what they were doing is no longer satisfying either personally or professionally, and they want to make a smart pivot, combining several of their interests into one new thing.
The very first step I take with them is to learn about their external business goals and their internal personal goals … and boundaries. Finding a balance of these two is the key to satisfying work done on one’s own terms and not the terms of grind culture, capitalism, or corporate souldeath.
A basic example: if I know I want to grow my business, but don’t want to be on social media constantly, trying to get likes and followers with an incessant stream of content, I’ll take an approach that seeks balance. How can I spend minimal time on social media, but maximize my impact? Or does social media even matter for this business?
Or, let’s say I offer one service that provides a steady stream of income, but capitalizes my time, and that I no longer particularly enjoy. How can I shift that weight, creating new opportunities to do more of the work I do enjoy, thus focusing less on the work I don’t enjoy? Or, can I change something about that work I don’t enjoy to make it as rewarding for me as it is for my clients?
At its core, this is about a balance between the internal and the external. We can no longer let ourselves be held hostage by exploitative work — working too long for too little, saying yes to work that makes us genuinely unhappy, or celebrating our 60-hour grind weeks when the only person who benefits is our boss.
Most of us work some kind of job(s) to support our art habit. Where do we find the balance?
Seeking balance in everything includes acknowledging where we sit in community in relation to others, and seeing how we can pay it forward. For instance, I’m privileged to do the work that I do. How can I make it easier for other people to do the same? How can I help other people craft rewarding paths, find their people, and create the space to thrive?
So. Those are my fundamentals to maintaining a stable practice in any discipline. They’re not commandments, and they’re certainly not iron-clad. Flexibility is the key.
Take a look at where you feel stuck or frustrated in your own art practice. Evaluate that knot through the lens of these fundamentals, or through your own. Where do you see facets you’d forgotten? New angles? Can you list them out, organize and prioritize them? Can you find a way to create new space to play? To reset your own balance?
Finally, always remember the most fundamental of fundamentals. Remember what the master said. (Not Mr. Chipmunk. Bruce Lee.)
Be like water.
