Convenience is not your friend

What is ‘convenient’ anyway?

My Apple Dictionary app defines it as:

convenient (kənˈviːniənt) adjective — fitting in well with a person’s needs, activities, and plans: I phoned your office to confirm that this date is convenient.

• involving little trouble or effort: the new car park will make shopping much more convenient.
• (convenient for) situated so as to allow easy access to: the site would have to be convenient for London.
• helpfully placed or occurring: guests were relaxing beneath a convenient palm tree.

Surely ‘convenient’ is good?

We live in a world where “convenient” is wrapped up and sold to us as the best way forward for everything.

The latest “king of convenient” comes in the form of the large language models that are dragging mediocrity to the forefront of everything that appears on social media, posters for dog grooming services at your vets and even when writing key business communication.

The key problem with “convenient” is that if something involves “little or no effort”, there’s bound to be an underlying negative effect; whether that’s giving away your personal data, paying extra for a load of bread delivered on an e-bike or getting Claude to do the heavy lifting for you.

In the creative industries, “convenient” comes in the form of pre-built templates, fast turnarounds and the desire to try and jam creative thinking into a tidy, stackable, profitable box. The hidden risks here are immense:

Mediocrity

The results speak for themselves, smooshing the entire internet into a GPU and asking for magic only returns beige. Sure it looks shiny, and by golly it’s been turned around really fast, but you can spot a AI design a mile off - and not because it’s good.

My old studio entrance used to have a massive sign in black writing that said “mediocrity is not an option” - it was a great way to remind me that whatever I was doing, it had to deliver. The sign is long gone, but it’s a powerful rule to stick by - and using AI for creative output won’t come close.

Talent Nurturing

The wider creative industry seems to have forgotten where new, exciting talent comes from. The industry seems too keen to see new young talent as a burden rather than an opportunity to shape the next David Ogilvy, Susan Kare, Mary Wear or David Carson.

The industry is taking advantage of their being a surplus of graduates for a finite number of vacancies by using “free internships” (slave labour) to get fresh talent without the awfully inconvenient burden of salaries or employment rights. This is a perfect way to put off some of the freshest creative minds for good.

Risk-taking & Learning Through Failing

Great ideas come from exploring new places, uncomfortable truths and getting things wrong. I learn through getting things wrong, learning from the mistake and trying again. It’s hard, and as a perfectionist, it can be incredibly frustrating. However, new ground-breaking ideas are hidden and unearthing true new ways of thinking needs to be difficult.

No great new ideas will come from standing on the digitised pile of human history. Get out of your comfort zone, be open to getting things wrong. Learn by doing, not mashing an instruction into a box 5,000 miles away. Be messy, stretch yourself, be more human.

Productivity over Effectiveness

I prattle on about this to anyone who’ll listen. Productivity is not a human metric, it’s for cardboard boxes coming off a production line. I used to worry that I couldn’t sit at a desk for more than an hour without wanting to run away. Industrialisation has conditioned us to believe that humans are meant to be prisoners of the office chair and that’s what makes us good workers. This is not the way for creative thinkers.

How effective can you be against what task you are set? What are the things that will make you a more effective creative thinker? For me, it’s less time at a desk, more time reading, getting outdoors and finding healthy ways to make the world a less cluttered noisy place.

Hi! I'm James Kindred. I wrote this!

I have over 25 years of experience in brand strategy, design and technology. My experience in both founding brands and defining meaningful brand strategies for others has given me a unique perspective on how to help businesses grow.