Drawing the same rectangles

When I hit a creative block in a design, I used to stop and walk away. I meant to come back later, and sometimes that took days.

Now I stay in the file. I stop trying to force a solution and draw the same rectangles again, the ones the screen started from. The block lifts while I am drawing. I have not cracked anything. I have kept moving.

The usual advice for a block is to switch to something else, a walk or another task. I go the other way, back to the first step of the work, the one my hands already know.

The demand comes first

I grew up with the idea that work had to be unique and perfect, and that I had to come first. That idea follows me into a design file.

A block, for me, starts with a demand. The design has to be extraordinary, or better than the last one, or unlike anything else. Once that demand is in the room, I stop looking at the problem. I watch myself instead, checking whether I am being original.

Wanting today’s version to be a little better than yesterday’s is a different thing. Better than yesterday I can act on: it asks for one more version. Extraordinary asks for a kind of person, and no amount of drawing produces one.

A rectangle asks for nothing

A rectangle makes no such demand. It is a box for a heading, an image or a button. Drawing it again keeps my hands on the material: the sizes, the order, the space between things.

I make every version I can think of. Some are worse than the one before, and I do not mind. I would sooner make a worse version than hold back and wonder.

Somewhere in the repetition the problem becomes ordinary again. It stops being a test of me. It goes back to being a screen that needs a heading, an image and a button in the right order.

I do not have to be a creative person this afternoon. I have to keep working on this screen.

Tiredness needs the walk

There is a moment that does need a walk. I am scrolling, clicking and switching tabs, and I no longer know what I am doing. A rectangle will not fix that.

A block feels different. My hands still work and my attention is still there. Only the demand is in the way. So I stay with the one task, draw the next rectangle and stop checking the clock.

The block usually leaves before I do.