Thinking Is the Best Part of the Process
The tools keep changing. The thinking doesn’t.
I’ve spent many years working in creativity. I’ve watched the way our work has changed. From pencil and paper, to computers, the internet, social media, and now artificial intelligence. The tools have changed dramatically.
But one thing hasn’t. You still have to think.
In fact, I believe that the more tools we have at our disposal, the more important thinking becomes. Today, it’s incredibly easy to produce something, but creating something that actually makes sense is a completely different story.
Everything starts with the client
When a project comes into Blerus Studio, for me, it doesn’t start with design.
It starts with listening.
Before thinking about what we’re going to create, I want to understand the person sitting across from me. Not just the company, the product, or what is written in the brief, but the thinking behind the business. Why did they build it? What are they trying to achieve? What concerns them? Where do they believe they are today, and where do they want to be tomorrow?
A client might come to us and say, “I need a logo.” But that request is often only the surface of a much bigger need. Maybe they want to look more professional. Maybe they’re entering a new market, trying to compete with larger companies, or simply trying to change the way people perceive their business.
Understanding what lies behind the request is where our work really begins. Because the job isn’t simply to give the client what they asked for. It’s to understand what they actually need and that doesn’t happen when we open Illustrator. It happens when we start asking questions.
The brief is only the starting point
I don’t really believe that a good brief automatically leads to a good solution. A brief gives you information, but information needs to be filtered, analyzed, discussed, and questioned. It needs to be connected to what is happening in the market and to what people actually expect.
At the studio, a big part of the process is exactly this. We sit together as a team and start talking.
Sometimes an idea that seems fantastic at first falls apart after five minutes of discussion. Sometimes, a thought that initially seems completely insignificant becomes the starting point for an entire project.
And that’s the part I enjoy the most: the thinking process.
Ideas don’t have office hours
I’ve had many ideas outside the studio. They’ve come to me while driving, having a coffee, reading a book, watching a film, walking down the street, or listening to someone talk about a problem that had absolutely nothing to do with the project I was working on.
And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about being creative: you can’t tell your brain, “Okay, it’s 6 PM. Shut the project down.” That’s simply not how it works. Once a brief gets into your head, it keeps working in the background, even when you’re no longer working on it consciously.
Something you pick up during the day can suddenly connect with something you discussed at the studio that morning. It could be a shape you noticed on a building, a sentence you read, a behavior you observed, or even the smallest detail that caught your attention. You may not think much of it at the time, but your brain stores it somewhere. Then, at some point, it connects that detail with something else, and an idea begins to take shape.
That, to me, is creativity. It’s not about sitting in front of a computer and waiting for an idea to appear. It’s about being curious, paying attention, and staying open to the things happening around you. Because sometimes, the idea you’re looking for isn’t going to come from the project itself. It’s going to come from simply living with your eyes open.
Our job isn’t to use software
There is another misconception I hear a lot these days: “But now, with AI, you can do it so quickly.” And yes, you can do things very quickly. But the more important question is: what should you do?
That question matters because AI can help me explore an idea, generate alternatives, save hours of work, and support many parts of the process from research and organization to prototyping and execution. And I use it. It would be absurd not to. But as powerful as these tools are, they don’t replace the most important part of the work: the decision.
We still have to decide what has value and what doesn’t. What is interesting but doesn’t serve the brand. What looks good but has no real meaning. What is genuinely new and what is simply following a trend. Most importantly, we have to understand what the business actually needs and what we need to create to move it forward. Because being able to produce something quickly is only valuable when you know what is worth producing in the first place.
At the end of the day, the client pays for the brain
This is probably the thing I care most about saying. The client doesn’t pay for my computer. They don’t pay for Adobe, Midjourney, ChatGPT, or any other tool we use. Those are just tools. The client pays for what happens before and after the tool, for the experience, logic, taste, and strategy that allow us to understand a problem and, most importantly, make the right choice among a hundred possible solutions.
And that ability grows with every project. Every client teaches me something. Every project adds another layer of experience. Every mistake changes the way I approach the next one. Over time, all of these experiences become part of how I think, how I make decisions, and how I solve problems. They stay with me long after the project is finished.
That’s why I believe what we build as creatives is more than just a portfolio. It becomes a form of capital that we carry with us in our minds, in our experience, and in the way we think. It’s a library of problems, solutions, mistakes, successes, people, markets, and stories. And the more you work, the more that library grows.
From “Working with a Computer” to “Working with the Brain”
In a way, I think the creative industry has always been like this. It’s simply become more visible now. When the computer arrived, many people thought designers would be replaced. They weren’t. When the internet arrived, the same concern came up again. Now we have AI, and once again, I hear the same question: “Will AI replace creatives?”
I think the real question is different: Will AI replace creatives who don’t think? Because production is becoming easier and easier, the ability to know what should be produced is becoming more valuable. The tools can help us execute an idea, but they can’t replace the thinking that determines whether the idea is worth executing in the first place.
That’s why I don’t say that at Blerus we “work with computers.” At the end of the day, a computer is just an instrument. We work with our minds.
And maybe that’s why I still love this work
Because after all these years, I can still have an idea at the most unexpected moment. While driving. Having a coffee. Reading. Talking to someone. Seeing something for the first time. And suddenly, something connects. “What if we do it this way?”
That is my favorite moment. Not when I see the final design. Not when we export the project. Not when we publish it. But that small second when a light turns on in your head and you realize you’ve found a direction.
For me, that is where everything begins. And that is exactly why, even though the tools will continue to change, I believe one thing will always remain the same:
