artist and editor

One of my absolute favorite illustrators and creative explosion,
the inimitable Christoph Niemann adresses exactly what frustrates me to no end
every. single. time. I perform, whether on stage, in a lesson, as a teacher or a student:

the balance of the artist and the editor.

He describes the process of developing his new app, the Petting Zoo,
equally delightful for adults and children alike.

"The painful and inevitable struggle remains to create in a childlike and openhearted manner, but to be un-wistful and cruel when judging one’s creation."

To read the salient part of the article, 

"We went to work and soon created some interesting results. It’s a challenge to come up with something new and innovative in a new medium.

It’s an even greater challenge to design it in such a way that the user will intuitively know what to actually do with it.

How do you create an experience that neither frustrates users with its complex possibilities nor bores them with repetitive dullness? That goal was made even more complicated because I didn’t want the app to use any words to explain what users should do.

I explored countless (but crucial) dead ends, and it all came down to the most important struggle at the center of all creative pursuits: being the artist and the editor at the same time.

As an artist you have to try new things.

You have to experiment, and not care about whether the new things actually make sense.

You can sketch and plan all you want. But, to discover new territory, you have to get your hands dirty and benefit from the flaws and accidents.

Eventually, however, you may arrive at a point where even well-meaning minds won’t be able to get your idea, let alone realize that there even is an idea to be gotten in the first place.

That’s where you have to bring out the ruthless editor in you, who takes that idea and cuts it down…

…to its core.

Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence.

After all the slicing away, you may realize, now that you can clearly see the idea, that it’s actually not very good.

That’s the hardest part: letting go of an idea that, having spent a number of passionate nights with, you have fallen in love with. Even with a certain amount of routine, this letting go sadly doesn’t become easier. The natural instinct then is to rely on what you know is working. It’s unfair, but this is the surest path to boring and predictable results.

The painful and inevitable struggle remains to create in a childlike and openhearted manner, but to be un-wistful and cruel when judging one’s creation.

Illustrations by Christoph Niemann.

via {the new yorker}