What she discovered was that, under uncertainty, many people have an implicit bias against creativity. An implicit bias is one that we are not aware of. She tested this with an implicit attitude test or IAT. Test subjects were shown words that were associated with creativity or practicality and asked to pair them with positive or negative words (cake or heaven are positive words, rotten or vomit are negative). The subjects almost all said they loved creativity, but when they were primed with uncertainty, their IAT test results suggested they felt negatively about creativity.

Yes, we are a bit picky in choosing our clients, and selecting the ‘right’ clients is very important. It’s what enables us to balance both practices and maintain our enthusiasm. When we fail at client selection, something we’ve learned mainly how to avoid, we risk losing the balance. We got to know Massimo Vignelli near the end of his life, and he said something to us once that very much informs our approach to client selection, “Good clients bring better clients. Bad clients bring worse clients. Choose your clients wisely.”