We are always waiting for the perfect brief from the perfect client. It almost never happens. You’re probably working on a job or project right now and saying, ‘This is boring, let’s just deal with it and get it over with. We’ll make the next one good.’

Whatever is on your desk right now, that’s the one. Make it the best you possibly can. It may not be great, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you did the best you possibly could, and you may learn something from it. And you’re always free to do an alternative that does satisfy your creative standards.

Good briefs don’t just come along. That’s true, even if you’ve earned a reputation for doing good work. Successful solutions are often made by people rebelling against the bad briefs.

What you learn at school are facts, known facts. Your job at school is to accumulate and remember facts. The more you can remember, the better you do. Thos who fail at school are not interested in facts; or maybe the facts are not put to them in a way they find interesting.

Some people simply don’t have a great faculty for memory. It doesn’t mean they are stupid. It means their imagination hasn’t been fired up by academic tuition. People who are conventionally clever get jobs on their qualifications, not their desire to succeed.