The Offhours #31: Ideas are Currency
Drawings, Quotes, Lettering & Notes.
👋🏾 Hi, welcome to The Offhours, a share of illustrations, drawings, thoughts and links. Thanks for being here, you’re amazing, tell a friend.
Prime Capital
I haven’t mentioned anything about generative AI (image generators specifically), beyond an article in my links section, with good reason. I have a front row seat to the current and evolving dismantling of illustration as a career, which is a sore spot and a big topic, and there are a host of write ups that exist that have captured similar thoughts of mine. I’m all for growth and change, but right now it’s very muddy as things re-align and people figure out how to sustain.
Through the benefits and pitfalls of this evolving tech, what comes to mind for me is the importance of ideas.
Post hurricane Sandy in 2015, I gave a talk entitled “Ideas are Currency”, encapsulating the work and freelance projects that were garnered by my weekly drawing project. Essentially the talk was about focusing on your ideas, and letting them lead you down different paths. Creating ideas and being consistent with a practice will show dividends, and maybe even score some clients along the way.
My practice then and now is not about technological prowess or the mastering of any particular technique— it’s about ideas and how they connect with people. It’s about trying regardless of opinions, and learning about myself along the way.
I was invited to give another talk in 2020, and wrote an updated version to present to the Foundation Medicine team. They have a creative hour block where they have outside speakers share their work and experience in hopes to appeal to the creative side of their scientists and medical professionals. I got to look at the five year gap and how things had evolved and changed. It was eye opening, and apart of the reason I wrote the last post on maintaining a practice, was to really speak to that experience. I’ve seen the progress and change first hand.
Solid research and a strong focus on their ideas, is one of the main things I tried to pass on to my students, when I taught a Senior Design class for a few semesters. There will be plenty of folks who know the design tools better than you or have access to things you don’t, but a good idea will transcend. Good ideas in the right situation with the right attention will open doors.
It’s a little eerie its come back around to this notion. I wasn’t even thinking about AI back then, but now it’s given the phrase more meaning, and I’ve been seeing a variation of this idea in articles on most creative blog sites.
Human ingenuity is prime capital, no matter what new tech arises, ideas matter.
📸 Linky Links
Listening: “Childish Gambino - Survive (Audio) ft. Chlöe” - I’ve always respected Donald Glover’s creativity and hard work to emphasize that you can be multidisciplinary and make good work in each space.
Reading: “Where the Creative Industry is Heading” - Buckle up.
Watching: “Sam Nhlengethwa In the Studio” - A jazz influenced creation process.
Substack Like: - Shout out to Mitchell and his fam.
Stay Wonderful.
I love what you're saying about the importance of ideas. Technology and software changes so quickly you will always be behind (or constantly just trying to keep up). A good idea is better than any Illustrator shortcut.
I've recently run into students being amazed at people doing crazy things with Adobe software on social media and wanting to replicate the effect. I get it, the stuff looks cool. It's hard not to respond with, "But it doesn't mean anything. There's no substance here. This is just an effect, not an idea."
Maybe this is what your talk is about, but any ideas on how to show people the difference between something that has a solid idea foundation and something that's just trendy?
Also thanks for the shoutout!