#59: Visual thinking and the messy process of creativity
Unpacking workflows, processes and more
Hello! It’s been awhile. I was out on vacation but I am back now. Been thinking a lot about the future of this newsletter—may even be obsessive about all of the ideas I’m pondering. With your support1 as my readers, I’m hoping to ship some of them soon. I just need to get past this really persistent post partum fatigue, a productivity killer especially for writing.
Ironically, overcoming that and all the other mental hurdles that come naturally with big life changes inspired me to write further. Which is why now, more than ever, it is so important for me to keep track of my habits (micro) and my lifestyle (macro).
With work, that means my workflow, rituals & processes. I’m imperfect, oftentimes messy and certainly flawed, systemically. This is about progress and the future. How do I get to where I want to be from where I currently am. The clues are scattered in the present. Without a doubt, I am a visual thinker. This post is a little peek about what that means and how it applies to my work as a creative.
Rituals and the modern day creativity stack
Rituals are important. They, oftentimes, make or break a venture. Especially with creative work, things tend to get a little bit messy consistently from the beginning to the end. All the more that it’s critical to master the art of documentation and organization.
This insight was completely alien to me a decade ago, roughly the time I started designing professionally. I was a mess. I had no concept whatsoever of organization (bad), never mind also not caring enough about the business side of what I do (also bad!).
Suffice to say, I learned a lot. I am still learning & the best thing about all of this is that this is fun for me. This, to me, is play. The idea and the exercise of thinking about thinking is my type of play.
Most especially in how I work. Why? Aside from the tremendous amount of intrinsic value I get out of this, it also benefits the output of my work tenfold. The most satisfying projects (company, self-initiated) I’ve ever worked on is built on top of these rituals and insights I’ll share below.
(I’ve written a lot about the writing side of my creative process in the past. This is a lot more focused on the visuals. If you are curious about the former, please check out the following from my archives:)
Anyway… back to what you came here for:
I take snapshots of my brain, constantly.
White boarding is an extremely common activity for most creative work. It is essential to brainstorming, you can’t have one without to other. The biggest advantage of this, aside from the strengthening collaboration among teams, is that you put your thinking in visuals really easily.
If you can put a face to what is happening inside your head, clarity is possible. I am a huge fan of this because it makes problem solving, not just fun, but also intellectually stimulating. It’s also a proven motivator. I am more likely to invest more of my time and resources into a piece of work if I can see the progress of it. Having it displayed on a digital or physical whiteboard is easily one of the best ways to do that.
There is a book I’ve been meaning to read about this but haven’t gotten around to, it’s called Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. Making sense of my digital workspace is a high priority for me and I look forward to making significant improvements around this over the next few months.
I write, sketch, record, take pictures and do a wide variety all other foundational tasks to creation, always.
One habit I’ve actually gotten better at: capturing thoughts on-the-fly. I’m doing everything from personal notes to audio and videos. Whatever is accessible at the moment. The most important thing is flexibility. When an idea arrives (and it always does), you have to do everything you can to capture it. Store and document enough of it so you can use it for thinking later on.
I can’t stress how important this is, especially if you want to retain the momentum of creative and innovative thinking. This is where the value of skills like sketching, prototyping, writing, video, audio and stills production can really shine. Hands and brain working together asynchronously. It’s unpredictable and chaotic and beautiful. Most days, I feel like this type of work is a privilege, seriously.
Personally, I use a desktop, primarily for most of the time. Mobile, aside from specific use cases, is mostly a support for developing ideas.
Nothing fancy, here’s my current mobile apps stack:
Adobe Lightroom, mobile - stills/photos
Figma / Figjam
iPhone14’s native camera and Halide (iOS) - audio/video
Instagram - video editing
Notion - general documentation
As a user experience designer, I work primarily on software products. Whether it’s creating interaction designs from scratch, developing new patterns or maintaining existing applications, I tend to put a lot of my initial thoughts into paper. Digital screens are great—especially with the iPad Pro but paper is still king, when it comes to the discovery phase. It’s fast, it’s cheap—which is needed if you want to be nimble and flexible. There is not a lot of room for attachment to premature ideas.
It gets a lot of the work done.
The era of hyper-creation
All of creation is an act of bravery. It is one of the most exhilarating, exhausting and satisfying things you can ever spend your time on. There is nothing wrong with doing this as a hobby, especially for the right type of reasons.
But if you really want to make a change, internally and externally, you have got to take this process as seriously as you can. After all, this is an investment of your time—and sometimes, money— to produce great work, the craft, the multidisciplines are it must be treated as such.
As designers, you put in the work that you deserve. Achievements don’t just happen. Dream clients don’t just show up on your email and most certainly, world-class portfolios don’t magically appear on your website. (Yes, not even with generative ai2).
You build your way towards it, to however you define greatness. A design career is made up of a portfolio: of work, people and companies. Careers, in general, are better off designed. Great things happen when you start to become a lot more intentional with your choices, especially with the things you spend your time on.
Digital and physical workspaces, workflows and processes are a huge factor to that. They’re the environment upon which your work thrives (or dies). The more in-tuned you are with it, the better the flow state of your work will be.
Thank you for reading,
Nikki
Got a quick second? Would love your thoughts, feedback on my platform
Relevant resources on the subject:
Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky - one of the best books I’ve read on productivity and creativity
Scott Belsky on Design Matters - if you are serious about pursuing creative careers, Scott and Debbie are just two of the voices worth listening to. This podcast episode is pretty special.
#476: Seth Godin on The Game of Life, The Value of Hacks, and Overcoming Anxiety
It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be by Paul Arden
Random things:
Join me on Notes — I fully intend to make this as my Twitter and LinkedIn alternative. I’ve also recently joined read.cv.
I started using Adobe Firefly (beta) — will write about it soon.
Moral support, not offering any paid subscription anytime soon. Just by being here, reading and commenting on my work is enough for me.
At the risk of sounding ominous: for now.
#59: Visual thinking and the messy process of creativity
i think this is my favorite post of yours so far.
and it's because of this: "All of creation is an act of bravery. It is one of the most exhilarating, exhausting and satisfying things you can ever spend your time on."
it made me go "damn. that about sums it up".
thanks nikki.