Did this for a friend.  The Japanese is (hopefully) their equivalent word for “gamer”.

I’d like to think I’m a fairly creative fellow, at least my friends and family say I am.

The problem is, I don’t feel like I get any satisfaction out of a lot of the so-called “creative” work I get tasked with at my day job.  Seeing as I work for the government, most of you who read this might say, “Well, Mike, what the hell do you expect?”.  In some ways, that’s a very accurate point of view, but in my experience it’s not necessarily the case.  Almost all of my immediate supervisors and coworkers help cultivate an incredibly collaborative environment for our design team, and they’re very receptive of our crazy ideas.  Hell, my boss thinks it’s hilarious that I keep a Nerf gun under my desk (hey, Dan keeps flinging rubber bands at me - he deserves what he gets!).

My main beef is with the fact that in the defense contracting world, you’re more at the whims of your client than in other situations.  For commercial or private work, you’re generally brought on as a subject matter expert, and despite any clashing with clients who are armchair designers, you’re pretty much able to let your creative juices flow.  With contracting, the attitude of your client is totally different- you had to submit bids and proposals for the work, and when you’re taken on, you are expected to ask “How high?” when they say to jump.  A lot of customers I’ve had in the past seem to think that we should be thanking them for the opportunity they are giving us.  Sound familiar?  Stick with me.

The main difference, as far as I see it, is that clients in my line of work tend to disregard anything that goes against the corporate (or military, or government) groupthink mentality.  Anything that looks unique is almost unilaterally shot down (once again, by our clients- my immediate coworkers are incredible people).  Our creative personnel are not allowed to express anything coming close to an opinion, and often times, a slick, well-designed comp we submit will be whittled down until it doesn’t stand out from any other product coming out of the other defense contractors.  Seriously, take a look at any of these websites and tell me that they do anything to try and look impressive, creative, or just plain “different”.  Hell, they’re all white and blue! (Okay, CACI uses a black background, but it has blue text!)

Even the more friendly designs out there can’t get beyond having to use the color blue as a major factor in their design.  When people I work with create sites like this or this, the problem clearly doesn’t lie with the talent.  Our clients always want what someone already has, and we are very rarely tasked with trying to break the mold.

You know what? That breaks my heart.