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I’ve been thinking a lot about how everything interesting is 10% something entirely different from the primary thing.
This applies to creative expression in nearly every context. A well-constructed outfit is 90% one style, 10% another. A piece of music is 90% structure and 10% hook. A thoughtful piece of furniture or architecture is 90% recognizable, 10% unique line and curve.
Even a great joke is 90% setup, 10% punchline. The final 10% is what gives the rest its meaning and value, without which it would simply be a pedantic story.
This is the 90/10 rule, and it informs much of my creative decision making. When it comes to photo work, the additive property is critical both in art direction, in lighting design, and even in post-production. That 10% is the surprise-and-delight, it’s the scroll-stop, it is the thing that makes any of it interesting.
An important note about this 90/10 split: it is not a simple mathematical equation of “10% extra good.” Good and bad don’t enter into the equation, and this is not a value judgement rule. It is merely a way of measuring difference. Difference of style, of approach, or of execution. The important quantity of the final 10% is only that it diverges from the original idea to a sufficient quantity that the 10% either democratizes an elevated 90%, or elevates a proletariat 90%. It is a context-switch, not a quantitative value-add.
70 years ago, it was a white tee and trousers without the expected overshirt. Today, it’s a white tee and trousers with a pair of the chunkiest loafers you have ever seen in your entire life. It is a considered detail that defines a creative expression.
Some people may be tempted to play with the percentages. If 10% difference makes something good, wouldn’t 20% make something great? Why not just do 50/50? Why not do 10x10? And having given this prodigious thought I offer these rebuttals:
20% contextual shift is an unfocused piece of creative. It hasn’t narrowed its focus to be a singular viewpoint yet, and won’t cut through the cultural noise.
This is what most creators are making, and wondering why their work isn’t attracting an audience.
50/50 is insane. 50/50 is Pokémon AI fan art drawn in a baroque Dutch Golden Age style. It’s an “Is It Cake” video where the Glock turns out to be, in fact, cake. It’s silly at best and psychically damaging at worst. This is what a lot of AI output is.
10x10 is a giraffe. It’s too many cooks in the kitchen, all contributing ideas which lead to something perhaps less aesthetically offensive than the aforementioned 50/50, but ideologically much more bland as well.
This is what most brand creative is right now, and an easy explanation for why most brands have to throw a colossal ad-spend budget at their creative work to get any eyes on it (Super Bowl ads, I’m looking at you).
There’s much this rule impacts, but I’ll leave you with this:
As creators who are tasked with communicating a feeling, and doing so in a continually new way, the temptation to do something different, just because, is attractive; but we need to utilize this rule in service of emphasizing the unifying feeling in the creative work.
Links I Like:
This quote from Dennis Hopper about the deep impulse to create (the entire documentary is amazing, please watch).
In film news, the first entirely new film emulsion released in years is now on the market and I’ve been playing around with it- will share a few frames in a future post.
Hanz Zimmer’s Dune 2 soundtrack is live ahead of the movie’s release and I’ve been jamming it nonstop. These emails are writing themselves today.