So you land a huge web contract and can't wait to get your hands dirty. Your ideas procreate like bunnies with a range of beautiful imagery, white space (not MySpace) layouts and fancy 2.0 buttons with a duplicate layer shadow opacity set to 45% or by applying a gradient. Product requirements take a secondary role in your design phase because quite frankly, this new design will blow away requirements. A few tweaks here, left navigation there, and there it is. You step back mesmerized by the contemporary Mona Lisa.
A few days later, you submit the proposal. Greetings. Hand shakes. Smiles in anticipation, then the ball drops. The designs are completely out of the realms of corporate branding, the yellow does not match the client's yellow (although it's really close), the layout is all wrong - gasp, and the list goes on. Meeting adjourned. One more chance and back to the drawing board. Where did I go wrong? What's wrong with my design? In your frustration, you take a day off and watch Dr. Phil with a bag of popcorn and head towards depression.
OK, OK, put down the popcorn. Let's say you have a good eye. No, let's say you have an excellent eye for design. You are what people would call creative. In your innovation, you whipped up what you and other firms would probably call the "perfect design". I'm sure it was, but for this particular client, it wasn't. Why? Well, creativity is often times misunderstood. It's usually categorized within the realm of art and design, but there's a little more to it than that.
It also takes a lot of creativity to review and communicate product requirements, define development time, resources, and identify next steps to complete a project. You need to see the bigger picture. One element which designers lack is the balance between creativity and client requirements. Again, I'm sure you are talented, not doubting that. The point is, your design must be within the bounds of what your client needs. Think about it, your client may very well have identified their niche market. They may also have contracted with another vendor for layout and theme selection. All you had to do was style the thing with CSS!
So don't limit creativity for just new innovative designs. You'll get your shot at those. For some projects, you may only be one component of the bigger picture. That's fine too, but it also takes creativity to design and work within the bounds of client requirements. Being creative doesn't always have to be design. Resourcefulness in itself is creativity birthed within the limits of what others would call a wall or road block.
