Commercial artists need to touch home base regularly since we are so easily distracted by competition, trends, and making a living.  If you’re anything like me it’s a struggle to stay focused.. Leave the foundation and the structure crumbles. Leave the study of art behind and your aesthetic skills dissolve.

“Don’t try to be original, try to be good.”

This is the first of my touchstones. The words are a quote from Paul Rand. In today’s context, the idea seems foreign albeit refreshing. On first read I felt more than one brick lift its weight – I thought, “hell, I can be good, just don’t ask me to be original”.   Originality is too damn hard.  Original is like asking me to be something I’m not; original is someone else.

I prefer to concentrate on the balance of form and content. As a result, I can listen to Paul Rand talk all day and his work feels like a visit with an old friend. It’s exciting, familiar, comfortable, surprising and challenging all at once. In the quest for originality, it’s easy to forget how to be good.

“When form overtakes, meaning is blunted, and when content predominates interest lags.” – Paul Rand

I can change my use of form when it suits the content; i.e. some images work better in black and white, some better in color. The variations are infinite but in the hunt for flawless balance, it’s content that is searching for its perfect form not the reverse. Therein rests the challenge.

Press creativity into service to find an aesthetically balanced fusion of form and content. The objective is not to make something pretty but to make the message compelling. The goal isn’t simplicity; the goal is to fuse meaningful content with persuasive form.

For everything Paul Rand, go here.

Allow me to lower the bar. Originality, the origin of which is you, is rooted in self expression. I helped teach a few years of Photography 101 on the college level years ago. Not much stuck with me except for one distinct pattern. Nearly all students where eventually infected with a malady; It was apparent that we educated the originality out of our students. It’s important to bear in mind that these were art students eager to develop their professional creative skills.

We say we want to be individuals, but more so, we want to belong to tribes – plural: recreational, professional, artistic, religious, not only social. Our tribes put very narrow restrictions on us. These restrictions might include dress, speech or belief but I’m mostly concern with performance in my tribe. I want to surround myself with greatness and count my social currency.

Everyone wants to “play up”, like owning the smallest home in an upwardly mobile neighborhood; hope says we’ll cash in. Remove yourself from culture too far and it quickly moves beyond subculture into outcast. Moreover, being tops in the midst of lameness is scarcely as attractive; an outcast of greatness? No thank you, anything outside culture is “crazy” and wrong in the ways of greatness.

In contrast, as an individual you long to assassinate culture. Culture believes its own lies and you’re looking for truth. The tools we use to fulfill a need for community are exactly those that restrain individuality. Truth remains the best strategy for originality, yet to communicate with your culture of greatness one must adopt its lies. Wait, I’m feeling dizzy.

To assassinate culture is to change it and challenge the immutable. The demands of culture will cause you to lose possibilities and your greatness is the biggest demand. Are you seeking originality or greatness? Though not mutually exclusive, one is a strict conformist and the other is not.

To solve the impasse, create an argument between your changes and the immutable.  Leverage the tension by telling a story that fills the breach. Everyone loves a good story.

To find the truth, accept information without judgment; don’t believe the lies. Adopt beginners mind to examine your culture. Avoid losing your original attitude for your art. The limitless meaning and freshness was what my college victims were taught to abandon. We were teaching greatness not originality.

A ready mind equates to infinite possibilities. In an experts mind there are few; never say you are an expert.  You are always a beginner.*

- by Bruce DeBoer

*paraphrased from Shunryu Suzuki