The Mission Statement I Didn’t Write

“I like good words that mean something.” Louise May Alcott

Do you have a creative mission statement?

A manifesto, creed, or mission statement is defined as a declaration of the writer's intentions, motives, and/or views. It has become somewhat on-trend to include one on your website: words that convey your beliefs and goals, your intentions. But putting together a succinct (and creative) snappy few lines can feel overwhelming. And adds to that exhausting list of things we feel we should be doing.

There are some great mission statements out there, and I do enjoy reading them. Some brands have taken their lengthy mission statements and condensed them into one line. Apple - ‘Think Different’ or North Face - ‘Never Stop Exploring’. Others provide a more verbose declaration, like the one found at the end of each edition of Magnolia Magazine. 

Each one appeals in its own way. The purpose, emotion or mindset is what makes the connection with the reader. And for a small business, building a relationship with the wider community is the goal, so thinking that a great mission statement will do just that is very tempting.

A blank note book sitting on a Nelly and Isobel design called Gentle Growth.

But it is all easier said than done, isn’t it? We don’t wake up knowing what we stand for in neat sentences. It is something we discover slowly in the preferences we didn’t realise were preferences.

It is often the colours we return to. The fabrics we refuse to discard. The weight of the line that follows us from project to project. Or the wallpaper we love but cannot justify. And it can be found in the rooms where you feel a calm inside that you cannot fully explain.

A written mission statement asks you to declare a position. Creativity is more likely to reveal exactly where we are.

Long before we can articulate our taste, we practice it.

Perhaps, a creative mission statement written too early becomes aspirational rather than truthful, a description of who we hope to be rather than evidence of who we already are.

The truer version tends to evolve without us noticing.

It lives in repetition. And as a surface pattern designer, I do love a good repeat ….

As we work and create, the mission statement reveals who we already are without us having to consciously contribute a word.

In choosing a smaller print when the larger one should have worked.

In pairing something formal with something worn.

In the never quite trusting that something is finished without that touch of whimsy.

After enough time, a pattern forms, not just on the fabric or wallpaper, but in the decisions behind it. The stack of fabrics that belong together for reasons you cannot quite defend, the rooms that feel right even when they break the rules, the colours that keep finding their way back into your work.

If you wish to understand your creative beliefs, look around at what you repeatedly choose to live with. 

Eventually, if you really wanted to, you could write out your mission statement.

But by then, you probably no longer need to. Because your work has already done the explaining, and long before we write that mission statement, we are already living it.

The real mission statement was never the paragraph.

It was the patterns that appeared along the way.