Clear structures for creative visions

When a creative vision for a project is too ambiguous, you need a person to drive it forward and clarify it. That person probably needs to be you. 

To do this, you might find it helpful to channel a creative vision through a clear structure. 

One example: at Figma, I was involved in a transmedia project covering speculative AI (a big topic!) that spanned multiple channels including a gallery installation, a set of interviews, and a press campaign. When my manager Amber saw me wrestling with the complexity, she made a really helpful suggestion: what would this look like if it was just an article?

The structure of the article made it possible to answer the simple questions:

  • What would the headline be?
  • Who would you interview for this article?
  • What is the thesis?
  • What is the lede? 
  • What are the sections? 

The idea was for me to bring the answers to these questions back to the transmedia project, with much clearer next steps.

While the project didn’t work out, I often find myself coming back to Amber’s advice. 

Since I’m a writer, I chose an article format to help clarify the vision. If you were a recording artist, you could choose the structure of a song.

The more familiar you are with the structure you choose, the more concrete your vision will become.

As writer and community builder Lindsay Jean Thomson says in Creative Doing, “Your creativity needs enough structure to support your freedom, but not so much that your freedom feels stifled.” 

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