Grow
I have recently attended and presented a workshop at the DO lectures in Wales and had the pleasure of meeting Miranda West, the publisher of DO Books. (A few months ago, we interviewed Miranda on The Common Creative podcast)
A common theme of many of the talks at DO revolves around stepping into your creative power, which reminded me of the story that Miranda relayed about the commissioning of the DO book covers. This story has a twist in the tail, not so much about how we step into our power, but how we have the opportunity to allow others to step into theirs.
After getting the nod from DO Lectures co-founders, David and Clare Hieatt, to publish books by DO speakers, Miranda set about finding a cover designer to create the series identity. She was a big fan of the artist James Victore, who had given the first of his two DO talks in 2012. She had a hunch that the going rate for book cover design was way short of the fees that James typically commanded, but decided to ask him anyway.
To her surprise, he said yes. But on one condition. Whatever he created was it. No feedback (unless it was positive!), no changes, and full creative control. Miranda agreed, but it was a huge decision and something she had never done before. Anyone who has worked in a publishing company will know how involved cover design meetings can get.
When designs for the launch titles came through – essentially the visual identity for the entire collection moving forward – it wasn’t love at first sight. The cover for DO Grow had a simple green scribble of grass… She rang David Hieatt and sought his counsel. To be fair, he wasn’t sure either. So, he suggested they sit on it for a few days and then see.
Miranda said that with each passing day, the simple image grew on her. (Pun intended.) By the third day, she loved it. The rest, as they say, is history. James has continued to produce every DO Book cover for over ten years. He even puts his name on them, and his signature is printed on the front of every book—another first.
She admitted that as a lifelong publisher and editor, especially with DO Books being her first-ever business venture, giving full creative control over to the designer was one of the hardest things she had to do. The core of her work is about guiding, challenging, and working with authors to craft their work into a book ready for publication. But here she put herself into a situation where she had to cede control. To say the least, it made her uncomfortable. She had to trust that James would do his best work, and in turn, he had to trust that she would remain true to her word and print the cover design that he created and sent.
The essence of this challenge opened up one of the great insights in over 100 episodes of the Common Creative podcast.
So often, we engage creatives for their genius and then proceed to tell them what and how to do the work. As an architect, I am all too familiar with this occurrence, although I acknowledge that architecture is complex and iterative and requires extensive briefing and, to varying degrees, co-design and collaboration. As an artist, I have complete freedom when I work on an exhibition, but again the lines start to get blurred when I do commissions.
But I, too, am guilty of engaging creatives of all sorts and then telling them what to do! It is so curious. I engage these people because I like their work and because I trust them, yet I feel compelled to influence the outcome.
And here is the thing: in rare cases when I have given over editorial control to a designer or creator (or, more often, when they have pushed back and got their own way), I strongly suspect that the result was far better than if I had meddled.
I don’t think this applies solely to creatives and designers, but to any expert, we engage with. Great things can come when we trust the process, and the outcome.
You can listen to the podcast episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-104-miranda-west-do-creative/id1525162918?i=1000648696776
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