Notes on Style

Too much of either one is going to give you real problems when it comes to creating your work. Those who tend towards order often go too deep into theory and get too stressed before even starting work - because when you start, the chaos will always break in. Those who tend too much toward chaos get stuck straight in, and then spiral out of control, never fulfilling the potential of their work.

It’s important to know where you are on that Order-to-Chaos, or Kubrick-to-Herzog spectrum, because without that self awareness and course-correction, you’ll fall into the same traps over and over.

That doesn’t mean to change who you are, it’s the opposite. Be as fully aware of who you are as possible, so that you can understand your own strengths and weaknesses and find ways around them. In terms of order and chaos, it could be really simple.

If you’re chaotic (I am), you’ll probably find your creative voice more easily, but you’ll lose your own thread quickly. Take some time to organise all your working files and folders, and see how much nicer it feels to enter your digital room without digital socks all over the floor.

If you’re ordered, save a backup (you don’t need me to tell you, you people always have backups…), then go absolutely hell for leather on your work. Allow yourself to make decisions instinctively, without thinking for more than a few seconds about any of them.

You’ll probably be amazed at how your fast, primitive decisions are as good as or better than your thought through ones - which will give you insight into how fast you could be working.

When I taught fine art, my students would copy their drawings and sculptures from a life model. Hours and hours every day, painstakingly rendering the flesh that was in front of them. Their task wasn’t to express themselves through their work. It was just to make their work look like what was in front of them.

To those who haven’t undergone academic training that sounds dry, anti-creative even. But that’s missing the magic - every single one of the students made work that looked like the figure in front of them. And every single one of them made work that was unmistakably theirs.

That’s the secret of style. You don’t need to find it - you already have it. It’s you. Not just orderly, or chaotic, but an infinitely complex mix of instinct, experience, emotion and genetics.

That’s not to say that you can’t study the style of others, and take what works - you can and should (take a look at Masters of Light to see me frantically trying to absorb everything I can about film lighting out of Gordon Willis’ brain). Whatever you learn will just go through the “you filter” and become your own style anyway.

This keeps things simple - all that’s left is to create - over, and over, and over again. Unfortunately, regularly delivering work is a massive pain in the arse, so that’s a discussion for another time.

For now though, two amazing books that you might consider if you want to improve your ability to deliver (and therefore grow and develop your style):

“The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield

“The Practice: Shipping Creative Work” by Seth Godin