Inspiration doesn’t create art, it gets you off the couch: Jon Jackson, Huge

Talking about inspiration is a little dumb. That was the basic idea that Jon Jackson, Executive Creative Director at Huge, gave as he kicked off the keynote at Digital Dumbo‘s “dd:Impact — The Design Edition.”

Making great things is hard, but we all want to do it, he said. He opened his talk with an example of what little use inspiration is in reality. He started with a cover of Gourmet Magazine that showed a cake with cupcakes stacked up on top, which inspired Jackson’s mom to make him a birthday cake when he was a kid.

It was a disaster.

Her first try was the one for his birthday, and it was terrible. “The first try is probably not the one you want to go out the gate with,” Jackson said.

He gave his steps to making cool stuff. Spoiler alert: there’s no shortcut.

• Stay inspired. Always be looking out for great things, but all inspiration does is get you off the couch (which doesn’t mean that it’s good).
• Be honest. Someone needs to talk straight about the reality of execution. Be ready to cede your ideas when other ideas are better. Don’t defend your work. This includes being honest with yourself. The reality is this means a lot of criticism. “This is the part of the project where the yelling starts,” he said. You got the idea that maybe there is some yelling at Huge (or at least, designers are not always gentle with each other).
• Keep pushing. He illustrated this example with great graves. He started by showing a pile of dirt and said there was a dead guy under it. Then he showed one with walls around the place where the dead person was. Then you get something like a pyramid and then you get The Great Pyramids. Keep pushing ideas and you’ll get there, but only with a great deal of sweat.

“Doing stuff for yourself is difficult because the only client is you,” Jackson said, by way of prefacing the redesign of his company’s website.

Their branded “H” became the way to display different products the company was really proud of. The Huge “H” functioned on their page somewhat like the old Absolut bottle ads, once a staple of magazine advertising.

“You gotta be honest. you gotta be honest with yourself. Then you’ve just got to drive the shit out of it,” Jackson said, by way of conclusion.