Creative Work on the Web

Category: Creative

Published: 08/20/2009 03:37 a.m.

This idea centers around 3 men on the web. Ze Frank, Hugh MacLeod, and Merlin Mann.

Over the past 4 years, these 3 guys have defined, demonstrated, and explained how to be creative on the web. I want to share some of the wonderful things they have done, and then begin to discuss some of the common traits they possess and I how I plan to learn from them.

Ze Frank

Ze Frank began a video blog (called The Show) in March of 2006, and made a video every weekday for an entire year. Each video was about 4 minutes, and according to Ze, took about 6 hours to make each day. Some of my favorite videos include Hindsight, Brain Crack (which is about creative work), and Complicated (also about making things). The show was filled with little nuggets that only regular fans could appreciate. Viewers were Sports Racers, enemies were Hard Chargers. There were power moves, nicknames, and games like dress up your vacuum. Along the way, there were mutliple instaces of interactions with the audience. Ze played chess with us, asked us to find ugly myspaces and find people on there with no friends. It wasn't until late October that Ze began receiving any money for these videos (in the form of a sponsored duckie with a link and text below the video). His first video with sponsors brought in about $2500 as I can remember, and eventually settled around a hundred or so each day. Not bad for something that he was doing for fun. At a time when web video was booming, I think Ze was king.

Gapingvoid

Hugh MacLeod (aka gapingvoid), began writing doodling on the back of business cards many years ago. It seems that this was mostly for fun. The drawings were mostly confrontational, sarcastic, and utterly hilarious. They eventually ended up on a blog called gapingvoid. Along with these drawings, Hugh began a series of posts titled How to be Creative (its been trimmed). This was the beginning of his entry into discovering what creativity looked like on the web. The chapters grew and Hugh began interacting with the audience more in the comments. It wasn't until a few years later that Hugh turned this absurdly long collection of posts into a full fledged book. Now, along with advertising for Stormhoek, Hugh uses twitter to connect with his audience and to sell his drawings, blown up to poster size.

Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann is the relative newcomer to the field of creative work. Merlin jokes around on You Look Nice Today and runs 43folders, which is a site that used to be all about GTD and productivity tips and mind mapping applications. Merlin discovered the concept of Inbox Zero (which it seems is now becoming a book) and discussed it intensely. He has the privelage now of traveling to companies to teach their executives and managers how to use Inbox Zero in their work, and ultimately how to control their attention. About a year and a half ago, Merlin shifted in his direction (and priority) and now focuses mostly on time management from less of an efficiency perspective and more of an effectiveness perspective. Now his posts (and videos) and silly at a point until they become very real.

These three are so far ahead of many others in the field of creative work, and they all do it in completely different ways. I have immense respect for their years of hard work, and congratulate them on their relative successes. Now for a bit of analysis.

Years of Experience

The first thing that all of these guys have in common is that they spent years working on things before the all seemingly came together. Ze had been doing silly web videos and flash games for years before The Show. Hugh did his drawings before the blog, and I believe Merlin has been involved with using the web as a tool for years as well. All of what these three did turned out to be great practice for the future. But at the time, it wasn't practice to them. They weren't practicing so that in 5 years they would be rich and web-famous. They did it because it was fun, and they did it because they liked creating things.

All three have come a long way and now have a much deeper understanding of their creative works. By the end of The Show, Ze knew how to make a solid web video, how to interact with the audience, and how to profit from it. Hugh has just begun profiting, but it still doesn't seem like he is focusing on that as much as interacting. He realizes that his audience, and not his art, are the reason he is getting paid. And Merlin just seems tired of the BS and is mostly interested in helping people be better at actually doing things, not just at GTD (there is a difference). These guys don't suffer from their expections not being met, because they know that with web creative work, you can't have realistic expectations. You have no idea what is going to happen. Ze Frank helped to create color wars, which was a game centered around twitter. It didn't go as I expected, but the problem there wasn't the game itself, it was with my expectations. The point is, these guys get it because they have been toying with creative work for years, and have done so out of passion and not out of the idea of getting anything out of it.

This is TOTALLY the kind of stuff I want to be doing. With creative work on the web, the medium (written, video, audio, illustration) is almost irrelevant. If you are trying to start doing creative things on the web, the last thing you need to do is get a Flip Cam, or start a blog, or buy a Wacom tablet or anything like that. All of those things come much later. This is the mistake I have made in the past, along with another big one. The big mistake I have made is quitting when it got hard.

We talkin' about Practice?

Back in 2006, I was making web video in my apartment. You can ask my old roommate. I had a DV cam and those college lamps with 5 light bulbs all moved around to properly light me. And the video mostly sucked. But it didn't suck because of the camera or the lights or any of the tools I was using. It sucked because I was doing it for the wrong reasons and with the wrong attitude. I wanted it to feel like the show, and I expected perfection from video 1. And it has taken me 3 years to learn that creative work on the web doesn't work that way. You have to suck at the beginning, and you have to keep making shit until one day it is not too bad. And eventually it is something that people outside of your family actually want to see.

Doing creative work on the web just requires doing one task, over and over. That task is simply Making Things. The other beauty of this is that it doesn't have to fit the typical mode of art that we think of when we use the word creative. I can make a badass spreadsheet that is clean looking, easy to use, and puts data in an effective place. I have made maybe 3 spreadsheets like that in 5 years of using excel (probably 300 spreadsheets). But the additional beauty of all of those crappy spreadsheets is that now, 5 years later, I can make badass ones at a much higher frequency. The crappy ones were essentially practice, but at the time I was making them they were actual work. The trick with practice is that it works best when you don't think of it as practice.

When I played football in high school I loved the games but hated practice. I missed the point. The practice was so I would be better in the game. The trick that these guys discovered is that instead of trying to practice, you can just play games over and over. You can make web videos over and over until you come to a point when what you made is really good. It doesn't require you standing in front of a camera (or a mirror) doing practice takes. It requires staying up until 3 trying to edit 3 minutes of video to get the sound effects to line up right. Because after doing that 100 times, you'll be going to be much better at editing because you will have learned the most effective way to do it.

Creative work on the Web

I realize this post is a bit all over the place, but the core of it is how to do creative work on the web. And the way to do that is to just start doing it. Do it wrong and do it poorly. And refuse to quit, even when your girlfriend's blog gets more traffic than yours despite her writing 150 words or less (I love you sweetie). My goal is to be producing quality creative work on the web by the time I am 30. I don't have any idea what medium I will use, and it is highly possible that it could be something that doesn't exist yet. But regardless of that, I will continue to write long posts about scattered topics and probably dabble some in video and eventually get to a point where I am very proud of the things I am putting out. Gaining an audience isn't a focus, and the audience only becomes a focus once they demand to be so. Profiting isn't a focus, so long as I don't bankrupt myself goofing around on the internet.

If you know me at all, and have seen any of the past stuff I've done, you will likely see that this is the path for me, and that I am just getting started on a long journey to making cool stuff that people want to use. If you ever see me quitting, please encourage me not to give up. This won't be an easy path, but it is a good one.