Transparency is a good thing.
I believe sharing how you do things is the most authentic form of marketing there is.
It’s good for communicating, creating an understanding of how you run your business and make your products. Telling the story of the object, is like evaluating the process – it’s good for you, for business and good for customers. It sets expectations, clarifies and shows authenticity.
But there is such a thing as sharing too early.
Sharing too early is like flashing your private parts in public, it’s vulnerable and scary. The ideas are raw, they will most likely change a lot because the road from idea to finished is never straight, and they might not amount to anything at all.
Putting work out there that is more than sketchy, work where the foundation hasn’t been tested – would be like crying wolf. It would spread confusion and you would appear to be all over the place. The creative process is suppose to take you all over the place, but it can appear very messy to someone standing out side.
For transparency to be good and work in it’s best favour for everybody, it needs to tell a clear story, which is impossible to see while in the creative process. In the process everything is muddy, questionable, and even though you just know when you’ve hit home – it’s still very fragile. Too fragile and fragmented to tell a compelling story.
When is the right time
How the dots are connected is only visible once the process is so far along you can see the finish line. And that’s when sharing is best.
Is it transparency then? In the name of making sense of an intuitive process, that doesn’t explain easily, because its based on a very subjective perspective and one persons perception.
Then, yes, it is transparency.