If You Could Live Anywhere by Melody Warnick

Author:Melody Warnick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CRAFT VS. COMPETITION

Places, like creativity, are a bit mysterious. They have their own energy and beauty that inspire us to new levels of artistry.

That’s certainly been the experience of Kristine Arth, the founder and principal designer of the branding agency Lobster Phone. She spent the summer of 2018 in France doing TypeParis, an accelerated master’s program focused on typography that, she said, alerted her to one of the biggest geographical differences in creativity: Europeans cared more about craft. Americans cared more about competitiveness.17

In San Francisco, where Kristine is based, “the mindset here is all about, I’ve got to be better than X, I’ve got to produce more than X, I’ve got to give more keynote speeches than X, and I have to create bigger things and launch better and be in X places.”

In France, the most talented people simply wanted to create something beautiful. Her European friends were more collaborative, and after work, they liked to talk about things other than work. Their feeling was that a breadth of interests and inputs fueled their craft.

Unlike her San Francisco colleagues, hopped up on seventy-hour workweeks, Kristine’s European friends picnicked, went to museums, even raised chickens. At the end of the day, it seemed to make them better artists.

Kristine finds value in both approaches. An Anywhereist Wanderer, she hopes to split her time between San Francisco and Paris, the two cities that represent the two selves she wants to bring to her design work. Her Paris self hones her craft and creates beautiful things. Her gritty San Francisco self knows that beauty alone isn’t enough. “If it’s not making money after I design it and brand it and name it and put it out in the world, then I failed,” Kristine said.

There’s a balance to making art and making money with art that Kristine is familiar with. So is filmmaker Justin Litton, who boomeranged home to West Virginia after film school in England.18

His friends were surprised, assuming he’d become a cinematographer in Hollywood or New York. “Everyone assumes that, you know, there are some limitations to staying in West Virginia,” said Justin. “And if you want to do big things, you don’t stay here and do that.” But what Justin wanted was a creative career, and living in small-town West Virginia made that possible.

His cinematography skills are unusual there. The company he started specializes in high-end corporate and commercial video work, and they rarely compete with other filmmakers for work. The creative pool is so limited that he and his team often take on every aspect of a project, from writing a script to casting a commercial to directing and producing it. Sometimes that’s overwhelming, but mostly it’s pleasurable.

Justin is practical about his work. Yes, he’s making commercials for local banks, not Oscar nominees. But he still gets to indulge in the very real creativity of deciding camera angles and storytelling approaches. “If I’m behind the camera, I’m in my happy place.”

Plus, creative inspiration is always right outside his door in the wild mountains of West Virginia.

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