… Till you Hit the Smooth Wall of Confindence

Over-analyzing does exist. It’s when we go through our work again and again instead of taking action. When we go through all the possible consequences in our heads and find new reasons not to take that final step. It’s easier to chew on our dreams than to put them out there for the world to see.

Before I finally published my first website, my illustration portfolio, in 2016, years passed. One more project. Another typographic change there. Once more adjustment in the navigation menu. It didn’t want to end. And yet the site was already ready to go. Or maybe not?

Despite all the frustration, I always notice that constant revising and adapting are also advantageous: What I’m working on simply improves. In the phase that could be understood as over-analyzing, I feel like a sculptor who has put the rough tool aside and now has the fine tool in his hands.

And finally comes the point where there is nothing left to do. Where I realize that any further change won’t make any difference. And when that happens, then … then I go through everything again. In the process, I eventually hit a wall. Not a hard one. It is as soft as butter. It’s a wall of confidence. And when this happens, there is no way back.

Sometimes I wish I would do things more impulsively and faster. Not procrastinating, not thinking, not investing more time. But I also learned not to demonize over-analyzing and maybe even procrastination. Leonardo da Vinci’s words have helped me with this. Perhaps they’ll help you to deal with that guilty conscience the next time you procrastinate:

“Creativity sometimes requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate.”

Leonardo da Vinci

The Opposite of Love is not Hate but Indifference

That is true in interpersonal relationships, but we can also adapt this in creative work. There is work where we forget everything around us, time, eating, sleeping – that’s what we call passion. We love what we do. For me, it’s drawing or playing soccer.

Between 2007 and 2013, I created hundreds of t-shirt graphics for fashion brands. I loved drawing and painting themes. Collages and photographic pieces I worked off relatively unemotionally. I was indifferent to them. On the other hand, I tried to dodge the task of designing typographic prints whenever I could. The development of statements, “catchy” wordings, as well as the design of the typeface was always incredibly awkward and tedious for me. It was like trying to fold up a gigantic road map. In short: I hated it.

But it turned out that, despite my frustration, I was able to create bestsellers. The aversion was constant, while the quality was increasing.

So just because we hate doing something, it doesn’t mean we’re not good at it. Quite the opposite. Our very dislike can bring a more sensitive view of things. It’s worth a try.

Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

My advertising professor in college used to say, “Finding a good idea is easy. The hard part is to realize that it is one.” This sentence will probably accompany me my whole life because again and again, I experience how true it is.

Teamwork and group brainstorming are often not the best places to hatch ideas. It works best in silence and solitude. Meetings come after that.

It’s like preparing a meal. In Germany, they say: “Viele Köche verderben den Brei,” meaning “Many cooks spoil the broth.” We prefer to do it ourselves. But in the end, it’s the guests who decide how good it tastes.

A quick piece of advice to find our creative voice

Sometimes we see or experience things that touch us particularly profoundly. Well-crafted commercials, for example, can evoke emotions that we never forget in our lives (as well as the advertised product). But it could also be an illustration, newspaper headline, or a simple melody.

When we come across a work we admire in such a way, we can adapt the idea behind it and try with all our might to create an alternative variation of it. Maybe a better one.

It may take days, weeks, months, or even decades, but somewhere between our thoughts must lie our very own brilliant version.

Instant joy vs. earned happiness

Instant entertainment is just the push of a button away, whether it’s Netflix, YouTube, or Playstation. They all have something in common. They give us immediate joy and fun. We don’t have to do anything to get it except turn on an exciting series or pop in that new game.

Yet, I always notice, especially over the days off between the years: This media is like fast food. The more I consume, the worse I feel afterward. Not necessarily physically, but because I notice how quickly time has flown by. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a relaxing movie night with friends or my wife. But as soon as I overdo it, entertainment systems turn into pure time thieves.

Creative work, on the other hand, feels different. Before starting on a new illustration, whether for clients or myself, resistance always gets in the way first. Sometimes in the form of an annoying little stone in the shoe and sometimes in the form of a massive, fire-breathing monster.

But no matter how big the resistance seems, it vanishes the moment I start. That doesn’t mean that only happiness kicks in from this point on. Frustration and panic are often just as much a part of the creative process as a pleasant and relieving “aha” moment when I’ve conjured up a good idea or a beautiful image composition. Pure joy during creation is rare and comes in waves. However, when one catches us, carries us along, and takes us to new heights, the feeling is almost certainly far more fulfilling than any Instagram reel or video game.

Breaks are boosts

No matter how much we love our work, we sometimes need a little time off to come back even stronger. For example, I love playing soccer but can’t do it for eight hours straight.

Illustrating is my greatest passion. I enjoy drawing every day, yet sometimes, I force myself to take a break for several days or even weeks. Then, I try to do things that have less or nothing to do with drawing. For example, I program and tweak my portfolio website, do the accounting, experiment with my concept for a fictional video game, or write texts like this one.

In my experience, I only realize how good this break actually feels as soon as I take a step back. Let’s consciously switch off our passion now and then so we can recharge. Otherwise, it may suffer from our ambition.

Seeing without knowing to get great ideas

To be able to orient ourselves in the world, we develop prejudices. Not in a harmful sense. But in order not to lose ourselves in the unfamiliar. We judge a situation based on our previous experiences and decide accordingly. These pre-judgments are like a template through which we see the world.

That’s helpful when visiting another city, learning a new program, or on our first day at a new job. Our experiences give us a sense of security and guidance.

However, this skill gets in our way when it comes to developing ideas. Children are much freer in this respect. We, adults, look at things in a biased way. A coffee mug is for drinking, a chair is for sitting, and a pencil is for drawing. Period. Or maybe there are other options? If you were born in the 80s like me, you know, for example, that there was no better tool for unwinding tangled tapes from audio cassettes than the pencil.

Let’s look at things through a child’s eyes as we search for ideas. Children are unprejudiced. They have no template yet, no bias. They look at objects they encounter from all sides. They twist, turn, play, and try all sorts of things with them. They discover.

Seeing without knowing is something we can learn again. Only when we can break away from our established prejudices do we recognize new connections because new connections are what make ideas original.

Once again, about “less is more”

My post 1+1=0 was about not overloading our work with information. Otherwise, we lose our audience. Be it illustrations, blog posts, or advertisements. In the meantime, two more examples caught my eye.

The movie Terminator 2 was a revelation to my 13-year-old me. It was the only movie in my life where after the credits rolled, I rewound the VHS tape right away to watch it again. I could almost speak the dialogue simultaneously.

One day when I held the DVD in my hands featuring a 17-minute more extended Director’s Cut, I couldn’t wait to watch it. Seventeen more minutes of Terminator! A childhood dream came true.

But the disillusionment was huge. The additional scenes were strange to the point of disappointment. Not only did they seem unnecessary, but they pushed the Terminator character in a different, almost ridiculous direction. Since then, I only watch the original cinema version. Again less was more.

I found another example in D&AD’s The Copy Book. Jim Durfree writes about professional writing:

“When you get your copy to the point where you’re really, really happy with it, cut it by a third.”

Jim Durfree (advertiser, copy writer)

Good designs are like evergreen songs

A brilliant melody like Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers or a timeless beat like We Will Rock You by Queen doesn’t need any instruments. We can whistle or clap it, and everyone knows the song immediately. On the other hand, a flat or banal melody cannot be saved even by the best orchestra with the most expensive instruments in the world.

It’s the same with design and ideas. A rough sketch of stick figures and speech bubbles on a napkin can visualize an idea for an advertising campaign worth millions. A boring illustration composition, on the other hand, doesn’t become more exciting when we color it in Photoshop. As far as logos are concerned, Kurt Weidemann puts it in a nutshell:

A logo is good when you can scratch it in the sand with your big toe

Kurt Weidemann (typographer, designer).

Before we waste too much time working out an idea or a design, let’s just put in the minimum effort as soon as possible. After that, we can always decide whether to take it a step further or drop it. Just visualizing it in some form usually shows whether it will work.

Feedback is a double-edged sword when generating ideas

On the one hand, criticism and the opinions of others can encourage us. We learn from the experience and mistakes of others. That is precious for our development. How often have professors, fellow students, and clients opened my eyes in despair? Communication is an essential tool for creative work.

On the other hand, the quality of our work is highly dependent on our ability to protect ourselves from external influences and opinions when necessary. For only in silence can we listen to our inner voice.

But each person is different in this respect. Brainstorming in a group, for example, can inspire some people’s creativity. In conversation, they bubble with energy and ideas. For others, however, collective thinking is counterproductive. They need time alone to think about the problem deeply and introspectively.

Figuring out what supports or hinders our creativity is an exciting process. Recognizing our highs and lows, and perhaps even logging them in writing, can bring about fundamental change.

Let’s enjoy having zero followers for as long as we can.

Each of us starts from zero – zero composed melodies, zero written poems, zero painted pictures, zero successes, zero failures, zero experience, zero attention, and zero followers.

We glance at our creative role models and the massive community they’ve built over the years. They have so much recognition in the form of likes, retweets, and comments. We wish we had that, too.

But not having attention can be a creative blessing. We will never be as free and at ease to create as we are today with zero followers. We can experiment, play, and do whatever we like. After all, we don’t have to be accountable to anyone or meet any expectations of others.

As soon as we share our work with the world, we must remember that it will be influenced. Whether positive or negative is not relevant. The fact is, the comments and number of likes will inevitably trigger something within most of us. Some work will get more attention than others. That will influence us, even if it’s just a little bit. That one nasty comment, among dozens of compliments, stays with us for weeks, maybe forever. That influences us, too, and with that, our work, focus, motivation, and creative development.

Feedback and followers will come with consistent social media channel maintenance. At a certain point, this is also beneficial for our further development and maybe even necessary. However, we have it in our own hands when that point in time is. And until then, let’s relish and enjoy our creative independence and freedom.

Let’s stop adoring our creative heroes

As artists, designers, and illustrators, we all have role models who inspire us. Beginners and students, in particular, tend to cling to their heroes initially.


But all that idolizing eventually gets us nowhere. At some point, we must pick up the pen and ask the only important question: What exactly fascinates us about our hero’s works? The answer is right in front of us. As we contemplate the artworks, we observe ourselves. What happens to us as we do so? What touches us? Is it perhaps the colors, the strokes, the subjects, the material? Finding this out while becoming active in the process is the key to our own artistic style.

4 reasons why toddlers are all artists

When we watch toddlers painting or blowing into a flute, we might be a little envious of how unselfconsciously and unbiased they approach things. Pablo Picasso said:

Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up

Pablo Picasso

Let’s see why this is true:

  1. Toddlers feel no resistance to start – no procrastination, no overthinking, no anxiety over a blank canvas. Children get started right away with what is in front of them. They paint, craft, and drum fearlessly.
  2. Toddlers try everything without expectations. They don’t know failure in creating. When they paint a picture, they don’t care about the result. It has no meaning, no value to them. It is all about the moment of painting. They also don’t care (yet) whether we, the adults, admire their works or not. We are the ones who see value in their paintings by collecting or hanging them on walls. The toddlers move on as soon as they finish without looking back.
  3. Toddlers are immediately in the flow. As soon as they have something interesting in front of them, they grab it. We adults need time and think about strategies to get into a creative flow as quickly as possible and not get distracted by e-mails, news, or social media.
  4. Toddlers enjoy the freedom of being unattached to their identity, yet. It’s all about perception. They try everything they can find. They don’t define themselves as illustrators, composers, chefs, or professional tower builders. Adults do this to ensure their place in society and write it on business cards. On the other hand, a toddler can be everything at once, always, and sometimes even at the same time.

When we watch toddlers playing, we see the pure act of experiencing and creating—such a great role model for us adults.

When our tongue betrays our feet – about sabotaging our dreams and goals

When I was about 18 years old, I read a sentence in a small book that I had never forgotten:

A bridled tongue makes the head wise.

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When we get excited about something, we want to talk about it. Maybe we want to apply to a university, go on a backpacking trip to Tibet, or take the leap into self-employment. These decisions are groundbreaking for our future. If we are serious about it, we should let this thought grow inside us before we spit it out too soon. Otherwise, the following may happen:

  1. There are always dozens of arguments against our decision, usually from people who care about us, for example, our parents. They wish only for the best and for us to have a more effortless and carefree life than they had. That is natural and lovely. But the easiest is not always what is also best for us. We can talk about our plan confidently when we are sure we won’t let ourselves be diverted from it. We have already reflected on these arguments and successfully disproved them for ourselves.
  2. Talking about our dreams gives us the deceptive feeling of already being in the middle of the process. In talking, we become euphoric and picture ourselves passing the aptitude test for college, standing in the Himalayan mountains, or driving our first Porsche. The feeling that we are already on our way creeps in. But that is simply not the case. We haven’t actively done anything yet to fulfill our dream. The journey does not begin until we have sat at our desks to prepare for the test, apply for the visa, or draw up a concrete business plan.

The tricky thing about talking about our dreams is that we load ourselves with unnecessary weight before we even take the first step. The arguments our parents brought up might sound reasonable and logical and now the first doubts arise. Or our friend, to whom we have described our plan so emotionally, now regularly asks how things are going. Without realizing it, we suddenly have to justify ourselves, and we take the risks that our motivation fades away.

Therefore, let’s mature our dreams long enough in silence before we destroy them by putting them out too soon.