How to Lose Creative Talent

Creatives need creative space.

Designers are often thought to be in the position to make important decisions about their work with their creativity given no limit. On the contrary, designers are usually so constrained by requirements from those who commission their work that they begin to feel lost and soon lose sight of the one thing they love to do the most – create. Medium recently featured an essay from Julie Zhuo in which she details how to lose a designer using a painter as her example. The same goes for most creatives:

After a productive start on a project, the painter was contacted multiple times with news of a shorter deadline, a request for a change in size, and the addition of an off-the-wall detail.

The work did not represent what you valued. The work, ultimately, was not something you are proud of.

Although the work was praised, it wasn’t what the painter envisioned. Instead, it was made to fit specific criteria that wasn’t made clear at the start  of the project:

Every person who works in a creative field has an aspiration for her work, a yearning for that ideal plane which is the culmination of her taste.

Why they leave:

When an environment fails, over and over and over again, to provide her with a means to follow her internal compass, then she will leave.

Read the complete essay here.