Give me a brand brief, a vibe, and a few guidelines, and I have somewhere to start.
Where I end up can still surprise me…. teehee
I tend to think about creative work in two broad modes: following a very technical path and feeling your way through the possibilities. I lean heavily toward feeling it out. I’m constantly tweaking, changing, and adjusting. A lot of the things I like most show up while I’m testing something else.
V1, V2, V3, and V4 can all have completely different feelings.
Seeing those possibilities is part of the fun for me. :P
A Brief Gives the Experimenting Somewhere to Go
I like having a starting point, a launch pad if you would.
The brand, the intended feeling, and a few useful boundaries give me enough direction to begin making choices.
Then I want room to see what happens.
That is why Lindsay Sparagana’s description of her exhibition, Two Weeks of Winter, caught my attention. In her artist statement, she explains how Houston’s sunlight, heat, and humidity became part of her wet cyanotype process. Her prepared materials changed during long outdoor exposures, and she began working with those changes as part of the image.
Read her statement at Houston Center for Photography.
There is intention at the beginning,
then a result that gives the artist something new to respond to.
That part feels familiar to me.
I can start with a clear direction and still find something worth following halfway through.
Let the Versions tell You Something
When I keep changing a piece, I get to discover what each choice does to its feeling. A different arrangement might make it calmer. Another treatment might give it more energy. A version I didn’t expect might fit the brief beautifully.
The useful question is what that version offers.
Does it carry the feeling I was looking for?
Does the important part come through?
Is there something here I want to explore a little further?
You can try this with a small piece of your own work.
Keep the purpose steady and give yourself a few versions with genuinely different treatments. Save each one before making the next change, so you can look at them together later.
Then explain what you notice in plain language. One feels warmer. One makes the message easier to read. One has an interesting detail you might borrow for another attempt.
That gives the experimenting something useful to leave behind, even when you choose a different final version.
Leave Room for the Thing you Couldn’t Plan
I don’t feel especially married to my first idea. The brief gives me a launchpad, and the process gives me more possibilities than I could have listed before starting.
That is a part of making things I want to keep enjoying:
being willing to try a change, pay attention to the result, and follow an idea I hadn’t expected to find.
Two Weeks of Winter runs at Houston Center for Photography from October 22 through December 6, 2026, according to the current artist page.
See the exhibition details.
Give me a brief.
Give me a vibe.
Leave me a little room to wander…
