I received some useful job advice from a manager earlier in my career. His wife was a midwife. Whenever a marketing deadline or creative disagreement became overly dramatic, he’d remind us that she spent her days literally bringing life into the world. Nobody here was doing that.
At the time, I laughed. But I’ve thought about that comment often over the years.
Of course, that doesn’t mean our work doesn’t matter. Deadlines matter. Budgets matter. A missed delivery can cost real money. Entire teams can spend months building something only to watch it get rejected in a fifteen-minute meeting. A celebrity might hate the photo you selected for key art and call their publicist, who calls the network, who calls your boss (been there).
Those moments are stressful. But they’re still not emergencies. Maybe that’s because creative work is inherently subjective. By definition, art isn’t math. There isn’t a single correct answer hiding in the back of the book.
Years ago, I heard stories about an executive who hated purple. Not “preferred other colors.” Hated purple. If a design leaned even slightly violet, it was back to the drawing board. A few years later, another executive arrived. He jokingly referred to himself as a “teenage girl at heart” and consistently gravitated toward pinks, purples, and neon. The work hadn’t changed. The audience hadn’t changed. The only thing that changed was the person looking at it.
Creative people spend an enormous amount of time searching for the right answer. Sometimes there is one. Sometimes there are several. And sometimes the answer depends entirely on who’s sitting in the room.
That’s part of what makes this profession frustrating. It’s also part of what makes it endlessly interesting. Either way, at times the process can become hilariously disproportionate to the actual stakes.
Design can be meaningful. It can preserve history, challenge assumptions, create connection, or make someone feel understood. But it is still just design. Most of us here are not fighting fires or performing open-heart surgery. We’re not delivering babies, we’re just arguing about the color purple. Which is a pretty fortunate way to spend a career, all things considered.
