February 2025
Service Design
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“Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck—and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.” —Michael Lewis (In Show Your Work)
‘Show Your Work’ had been on my reading list for a few months after I saw it at a bookstore and was intrigued by the leaflet. After reading it, I then realized Austin Kleon has two other books to accompany it. Naturally, I went ahead and read the whole trilogy.
Often times, visual designers are the primary team members who are thought to be the “creatives.” I somewhat struggle with this line of thinking; it seems pretty literal and neglects to acknowledge that formulating research plans or thinking about broader scope strategy-type decisions provides the perfect setting for creative thinking. However, I do agree that ‘designers’ and ‘artists’ do not exercise the same methods regarding the creative process. This exact reason led me to read these books: to try and think a bit more like an artist or at leas to view my work a bit more like art, and less like work.
Austin Kleon is a writer (among other things) and speaks to his own creative process in addition to the processes of some of his friends - musicians, other writers, etc. He then sums up his findings into his books (or at leas that’s how I see it).
The first book of the trilogy truly felt like a foundation for the other two: Kleon shares some practical advice on enabling creativity and spurring personal (and therefore processional) growth as a creative individual. He shares ten primary lessons with sub-lessons in each section. My favorite three lessons are:
1) Invite people into your process: in the product space, everyone knows that this absolutely crucial to having any modicum of success. One of the most successful ways of enabling inclusion is to allow non-design/non-creatives into the creative process because at the end of the day: anyone can be creative/contribute to the product.
2) Keep a log to track progress and provide space to think in an analog way: Like many other people, I keep a work journal digitally, but have never sprung for buying a physical notebook. I identify with Kleon’s logic that analog tools remove the temptation for perfection and provide space to get away from writing too much.
3) Choose what to leave out: There seems to always be a constant battle between brevity and showing your work but this point seems to identify a happy medium; tell the story like a story.
The second book of the trilogy was the original main event for me and ended up actually being so. The lessons Kleon shared in this body of work all felt directly relevant to my day-to-day work: trying to balance a creative-oriented career while in the professional world. My favorite three lessons are (aside from putting your work out into the world):
1) The amateur mindset is ideal for growth: Since amateurs have less to lose, we tend to take more chances which, in turn, leads to more learning. Kleon states:
“Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown.”
2) Work does not speak for itself: How people feel and understand work directly affects how they value it; although there are some exceptions to this, people want context surrounding what led to work.
3) Learn to take a punch: although individuals in the creative space often inherently have tough skin, sometimes people will externalize a negative thought that you already had yourself; these are the criticisms that affect people the most. Learn to brush these things off and to keep moving above all else.
The final book felt like the cherry on top - the motivation and final push to “keep going.” These lessons felt more practical to day-to-day tasks that everyone faces: keeping a clean workspace, learning your own mannerisms, when to step away, and how to keep momentum going. My favorite two lessons are:
1) Nothing is linear, especially creative lives: Kleon describes ending a project and arriving back at the same place you felt you were when you started said project; there can be a profound emptiness after completing something but try to learn to ignore this. For him, it seems that maintaining momentum is the best way to maintain creativity; in other words, don’t ever stop. Although it seems like a recipe for burnout, this same philosophy seems to work for me.
2) Environment makes all the difference: Every happy designer I know works with a diverse and interdisciplinary team that enables the healthy dissemination of ideas; this can only truly happen when people aren’t afraid for how they will be judged for sharing said ideas. Kleon’s description of this is as follows:
“You need a good place to have some bad ideas.”
I found this trilogy to be extremely helpful and, in particular, deeply related to Kleon’s advice on maintaining creative momentum. I enjoyed his integration of quotes from a variety of other artists including: F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. All of the selected samples were overwhelmingly timeless and created a sense of inspiration to read more literature; people of the past have already experienced many of the dilemmas we find ourselves in today so why not listen to their shared knowledge? It was pleasantly cyclical arriving at the end of this journey relating to all of the lessons Kleon shared that are framed as primarily applying to creative individuals.
