Coming up for air

One of the qualities of a truly creative experience, I’ve noticed, is that you enter a state of mind in which time moves very quickly and you sort of lose touch with reality. This usually happens in short bursts of a few hours or perhaps as much as a half a day. This is one of the joyous parts of creativity, and a good sign that cool things are happening.

Earlier this week we launched our redesigned corporate web site, and for the first time in 238 days (according to my handy WordPress alert), it occured to me that I needed to blog on the topic. Yes, 238 days is a long time to be locked in a creative time warp, but looking back on this giant project I think it’s accurate to say that it has been pretty all-consuming—so much so that many other things (including blogging) had to fall by the wayside. It’s amazing how fast those 238 days went for me and my creative team.

The results, though, have been very gratifying. The site was built around client needs and expectations, so the positive feedback we’ve received from clients is exciting. The part that I’ve enjoyed nearly as much is hearing from some of our staff that the new site has given them a new and more favorable understanding of their company. We rightly focus on clients when we do these big brand projects, but they also have the potential to shape the company’s sense of itself, which in the long run can be every bit as powerful.