Less Talk More Rock. Or perhaps the more salient point is ROCK BEFORE TALK.

This essay is more about preserving aesthetic coherence in a collaborative process, but a related point I like that's not made here: rocking first makes the talk more effective. Rocking first gives you something to talk about. Vision, rock, talk, then rock some more.

The problem is often that the people with vision are less able to do the rocking, probably because it isn't their professional role in the process. So they talk instead. The solution: make everyone into polymaths, Renaissance people. Give everyone the skills to build, or at least sketch. Give everyone the power to rock.

Find yourself talking? Learn to rock. I have things I want to do that require web design and illustration skills I don't have, for instance, and while those things would ultimately involve a professional web designer and illustrator to do most of the rocking, my inability to rock means I'm less capable of communicating my vision and getting a professional designer on board in the first place. I'll take a 3-month hiatus to learn to draw if I have to. Because talking some web designer's ear off isn't going to get it done.

Get the Blu-ray set for Pixar's Up, and watch the behind the scenes featurette of the art direction team taking a trip to Venezuela to climb around the tepuis. They take photos of scenes, textures. They sit with portable watercolor kits and pads, and they capture the environment to take back to the studio. Apart from being jealous of their ability, I got the distinct impression that not everyone on that trip was officially an artist, but everyone on that trip was capable of exploring ideas through making things. Damn I want one of those little watercolor kits SO BADLY.