Creativity and The Gap
When we as creatives start out, there is something called The Gap. The Gap between our good taste and producing good work.
Does this sound familiar?
These are the famous wise words spoken by Ira Glass. Don’t know who he is? Well shame on you! Just kidding!
Ira Glass is the host and producer of the radio series This American Life. I have been listening to This American Life for over a decade now! Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of the show and Glass! Each week the show selects a theme and puts together different kinds of stories on the theme.
There is such an art with telling stories especially on the radio. The voice and the well-timed pauses are so important in presenting a killer story! There are so many parallels I can draw from this to illustration and surface designs — for example the right colors and negative space contributing to your illustration or design.
Many moons ago (I think it was circa 2009), Glass was interviewed and spoke about story telling. Here he goes into more detail about The Gap. These pearls of wisdom have been shared many times and in different forms. I first heard of it in 2016 via David Shiyang Liu’s lovely typography short film and to this date, I still listen to The Gap. I find it so relatable to my own creative journey. It has provided me comfort and encouragement during unsure times to keep going.
Hear Glass speak of The Gap yourself via photographer and visual storyteller Daniel Sax’s short film:
If you can’t listen to it at the moment, here it is in written text:
Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?
A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.
And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.
And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?
I share this with you in hope it will also bring you comfort and encouragement on the rainy days of your creative journey.
