A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a D&AD Creative Design Lab talk from The Partners Creative Director Stuart Radford.
The reason I wanted to attend was the subject of the talk. Something all of us experience, and something we will all probably hate. ‘Fear’.
As a creative you are constantly (or should be) in a state of anxiousness. I know you’re probably thinking ‘Why?’, but the reason is that as soon as you become comfortable with something, you no longer challenge yourself to be better. This in essence was the subject of Stuart’s talk. He spoke about rather than being ‘Fearless’ we should ‘Fear more’. Embrace the challenges and the awkward feelings that come with not knowing what you are doing and let this drive us to be more creative and deliver better results for clients and customers.
Whenever we step out of our comfort zone we always find something out about ourselves. Fear essentially pushes us to be better at what we do and Stuart’s message was to embrace this fear to create better work.
So, here’s to fear and uncomfortableness, as Stuart says ‘fear has helped me do my best work – it ensures I question the work more rigorously, explore more and push myself and the work further. In fact, it is still one of my most important motivators’.