Last fall, I planted 100 tulip bulbs. Tulips are my favorite flower. I even like their leaves. But Tulips, like most beautiful things, take time to bloom. In fact, they lay dormant through the cold winter, and in Indiana, winter is cold.
As a graphic designer turned creative director, I'm a sucker for beauty. One misconception about beauty is that it is instant. Much of the beauty we see in the world is natural. So we assume it is instant.
But much beauty takes time.
Often in the world of graphic design, the project brief can be summed up as, "We want it to be beautiful and we want it to be fast. Oh, and we will know we like it when we see it." Even the fact that we call them project "briefs" points to the idea that we think it is quick.
But beauty takes time. It takes a process. Sometimes a deeply creative process is like a tulip bulb shivering through a deep winter to reveal its true beauty months later when the spring rains warm up the ground.
Remember, the most beautiful things take time.