How do you articulate something you discern irrationally?
Love this post, The Jony Ive Principle, by Daniel Rakhamimov, who makes some fantastic points and you should go and read that. One thing in particular resonated with me when I watched the interview with JJ Abrams & Jony Ive.
Jonny Ive
I do believe that we are capable of discerning far more than we are capable of articulating…
Daniel Rakhamimov goes on
Now think about that for a second…what Jony is so eloquently implying is that when he designs the products that touch millions of people on a daily basis, he doesn’t do it with the notion that we will experience it through our rational thinking brain, but that we will feel it through the deeper, less articulate, emotional one.
I love this, and everyday I find myself struggling to explain a feeling about one thing or another, but it’s there and it is real. You simply just know when something is right, is good, is cool.
JJ Abrams, goes on to develop this thought towards Brian Grazer, mentioning how he has a reknowned gut in the film/tv industry for knowing what will make a good film or tv show. And that it’s not through being overtly strategic or thinking ‘there isn’t such and such out there right now, so lets make that’. It comes from a place where you just feel something when it’s in front of you.
There was an episode of The Sopranos A Hit is a Hit, where Chris is trying to help Adriana to have a career in the music industry, and plays a demo to Hesh (a wealthy record producer, now retired). Hesh says it's not good and speaks to the gut feeling he had when he met Hendrix, and that Adriana’s band don’t have that (Hesh making it easy there for the poor band!).
Later in the episode, when overhearing a random song playing, Hesh tells Christopher "Now that is a hit". Chris is left a little dumbstruck, and here in a nutshell is the point.
It’s in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder needs to have the vision, the understanding to somehow know it’s right.
In the commercial world, it is vital to be able to share that vision, whether by themselves or through articulating it, even in a small way, to a team or an individual to make that vision come alive, otherwise they'll be nothing.
