I've come to think about what agencies do best as 'simulated obsession'. A company that’s paid to invent something on your behalf needs to become as interested in your domain as anyone that's ever chose to work within that domain.

For some time, we’ve talked about how businesses can ‘Act like a startup’. And a recent post from Dave Trott highlights the biggest difference between passionate startups and large corporations - startups are creating fine art, big corporates are working in applied art. Not literally, but you get the idea.

There are two kinds of design - introspective design, where a designer creates something for herself and outrospective design, where the designer is focused on creating something for someone else. Agencies are generally required to do the latter more than the former. Apple is an example of an organisation given to designing for themselves. Oliviero Toscani is an extreme example of an introspective designer, so much so that he simply could not give a fuck who's paying for his work or even why. 

Like all human traits, this isn't a boolean, it's a spectrum, running from outrospective design, to introspective design. Many fine artists might occupy the introspective side of the spectrum, while no doubt there are plenty of artists that design to order in the outrospective realm.

Introspection is easier and more efficient. But you're leaving the appeal of your design completely to chance - based on the odds of the number of people who share similar desires to you. Steve Jobs had his entire company design for him, and it worked out because he's basically a pretty normal guy with an incredibly messy desk (and a fastitious and obsessive desire for quality). But if you're specifically designing for people who you are not, then you need to practice some outrospection. And you're going to need to work in a very different way.

I don't believe that one particular approach is better than the other. I'd just like to point out the differences and acknowledge that design teams and designers should have a healthy balance of both. The UX profession has a pre-occupation with outrospection, while graphic design is very much inrospective. Of course, most UX people should argue that they are more holistic than that.

Now, if your aim is to create beautiful, useful, disruptive innovation, it isn't just one or the other. You need both. Disruption can't come solely from outrospection, it has to come from an intrinsic desire to create something wonderful, new and refreshing regardless of who is using it. You need to develop an instinct about the audience that allows you to understand what they want, because you've spent enough time learning what they are like, you've hung out with them for a bit, you carry a tiny piece of them around with you in your memory.

The old cliche about people not knowing what they want is true to a certain point. Asking them what they want is silly, because they don't know the boundaries, the possibilities that you know about. They aren't going to voice their ideas in a situation where they may sound ridiculous because they've gone too crazy. Instead, in order for something to really excite and provoke wonder within them, you have to create something new and unseen. And to create something new and unseen you have to be fundamentally introspective. But you then need to go outrospective to be able to understand people's reactions to that and to add to your instinct about the people that are expected to use the thing.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

Pixar story artist Emma Coats on story basics.

"On a lot of this new record, we actually tried to simulate the sound of what we thought the crowd would do during the songs,” says King. “Dave and I were in the studio just screaming out as if we were in the audience at our own show.”

Japandroids talk about writing their new album.

Thanks to @laurasnapes for pointing out the connection between Japandroid's and Emma Coats' creative process.