It’s officially D-7 since the W.H.O. declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic. So naturally, I’ve been facetiming friends and family more since we’ve all (well most of us working in advertising) have been instructed to work from home, on top of all the restaurants, bars, public event spaces being closed. This morning, I was chatting with my fellow female creatives (our group chat is full of “how long are you wfh for??” and “omg why didn’t I get wine!”) when our now-routine question of what our plans for the day came up. I typed excitedly about how I was working on coming up with ideas for Carte Blanche, an advertising competition where you have a billboard and can do whatever the fuck you want with it, basically.

Odd though - if you know me in the slightest - I am not one to get excited about these things. Yes, I work in advertising, but to be frank, ad competitions nor awards were never milestones I dreamt of reaching in my career plans. And as someone who’s a strong production art director, it’s difficult to get excited about anything that doesn’t entail a shoot. So while my girlfriends were barfing at the idea of working on an advertising competition at a time like this, I realized the real reason why I was excited. I had my sketchbooks spread on my little wooden desk, with a vase full of yellow daffodils, and “black wedding music / love songs” (I appreciate the bluntness, Spotify) blasting from my speakers. The whiff of floral and the vocals of Luther Vandross decorating my apartment is why I feel excited at the thought of making a damn billboard. Workspace is everything. If I was being forced to work on this at my desk at the office, this would be a different story. But getting to work at the pace, the style, and in the space of my own curation, changes everything. There’s something in doing, and not forced to do. Creating, and not forced to create.

Hear me out: An office space creates a limited environment where the sole purpose is to place pressure on individuals coming in, to lose themselves as ‘true individuals’ and work as a ‘collective’. While that is somewhat effective, it also creates an environment in which all anyone does on their own will is check their phones and impatiently wait for 5:30pm, when they can go home (hopefully) and do what they WANT to do as individuals. Can true individuality and collectiveness coexist? I’m not talking about “wear what you want to the office” or “speak your mind in this meeting” kind of individualism. I’m talking about an environmental individuality for creativity - specifically about one’s curation of their environment that best creates their state of flow, and being able to integrate that with others’ curation of their environments.

Is it an office where every individual gets their own room? And each individual is able to curate that room however they see fit, that will induce flow best for them? And if we’re thinking that way, then right now, leadership teams in modern office spaces must have the best state of flow, having their own rooms decorated to a bougie tee. Except, aren’t their state of creative flow less necessary compared to those who do the actual “creation”, for example art directors, designers, and writers? Perhaps the capital office space format favors hierarchy more than productivity. And if that’s the case, then it will be interesting to see how many creatives working in a commercial industry find their creativity flow during this period of self-isolation - from the comfort of their individually curated spaces.