Help with my Ideal Medium and Impact Statement

[Happy Lizard]

I'm having this challenge with my LP work; it's in two parts: 

1. The ideal medium: when I'm thinking about the ideal medium for me, I find that I love both designing and drawing, but I'm not sure how to pick between them or if I can or should. 

2. Impact statement: When I was contemplating my zone of genius, I found that it’s turning imagination and ideas into reality—in effect, communicating feelings, thoughts, and visions. The wording is still not exact, but it can be "into reality" or "into physical reality that can be seen by others," basically creating art from my imagination. However, the zone of impact is larger for me.

While doing the exercises, I got a mix of answers: the millions-dollar exercise led me to design and make art, while the speech and life challenge ones led me to guide people to psychedelics. I feel like guiding people to psychedelics through my art and designs is something that I find meaningful. I would love to make art that communicates to people how life-changing psychedelics can be. 

I also feel passionate about making designs for packages and ads that can be placed in public or at someone’s home or kitchen counter, adding beauty to their lives. Both are legitimate ambitions of mine; I really don’t know which one to go for, but in general, if I use the process of exclusion and thinking in the long term, it feels a bit too constraining to make it my specialty to ONLY make drawings and designs to point people to psychedelics; it seems like a much further goal down the line, while general designs to make people amazed by good art are more expansive, especially if my work is going to be for companies that have a positive impact on people. 

A big part of what I like about my art is inspiring people by communicating to them emotions and ideas, as well as adding beauty to their lives.

I'm not sure how to sum all this up in one impact statement; could the above be my impact statement for now? or is it too vague or not focused?

[Happy Lizard]

Bumping this thread up: 

still can't decide between making art and graphic design. Creating good graphic designs requires drawing and I love both.
also I can't get clear on the exact impact I would like to have. I squeezed my head, and found out that guiding people to psychedelics was not so important to me as a life mission, I just know that it's adding beauty and art to people's lives.

Turning my imagination to reality, creating the beautiful package designs that add beauty and delight to people's environments/lives (Kitchen counter tops, rooms, houses etc) 



Edit: Do I need to specify the exact medium in my LP statement? Can I leave package designs, and replace that with "Art" or will that make it too vague ?

 

 

Edited July 6 by Happy Lizard

[Michael569]

Don't feel like you must choose one thing and stick with it for the rest of your life. Your LP may be changing and shifting over the years and so may your impact statement and the medium. 

But I understand the desire to get it right, its sort of a competency curse that once you're good at at a lot of things where you are no longer limited by your ability but you are now limited by the abundance of choices, it can be a bit frustrating to have to choose one. 

Anyways, it seems to me like you already have a pretty decent idea of what both are here: 

On 26/06/2024 at 11:41 PM, Happy Lizard said:

inspiring people by communicating to them emotions and ideas, as well as adding beauty to their lives.

This seems like a powerful vision. Now from here work your way backwards. Where vision is the pinnacle of your Life Purpose Journey, the Impact Statement and Medium are further lines down. 

You said you like drawing, could that be your primary medium? Maybe you can have primary and secondary medium if you prefer more than one tool. 

On 26/06/2024 at 11:41 PM, Happy Lizard said:

hen I was contemplating my zone of genius, I found that it’s turning imagination and ideas into reality—in effect, communicating feelings, thoughts, and visions.

This is a good start and seems more like your Mission Statement. 

Impact Statement is a little bit closer to your daily grind. Like when you zoom out of the things you do on daily basis (drawing, designing, researching, journalling) , you do that...to what? To help people what? Who are you trying to impact with your art? To generate (what?) and for (whom?) - that's your impact statement

It is the bridge between your medium and your mission & vision. It is still a bit vague although it hints at direction (like a sign on a highway that says (Montana 350 miles this way, it helps but if there was no other sign you would probably miss Montana)  but a bit specific that it connects to your ideal medium (driving your car on the highway, pressing the pedals, changing the gears, keeping the speed limit etc). 

For example my LP Statement (when I did this in 2016) was Studying Health & Wellbeing (medium) to help people live longer, better and thrive in life (impact statement) If I had to rewrite it today it would be tiny bit different as my LP has evolved but the essence remains the same, the impact statement is exactly the same 8 years later. 

The medium communicates to you what you do. The impact statement takes one step away from that communicating who you do it for and who (or what) are you impacting? Its kinda the answer to "what's the point of all this drawing/designingn?"

Is this helpful? 

Edited July 8 by Michael569

[Happy Lizard]

@Michael569 when I reflect on what you say, I think I would love to elevate people taste in design, rase their standers so that they demand good graphic design in their “world”. Meaning I want to make good graphic designs that people enjoy.

But I want to draw it’s very important for me, which is where the dilemma is.