Learning to Look: The Art of True Observation

There's a moment Paul Lavoie describes from his art college days in Montreal that stops you cold when you really think about it. His drawing teacher asked students to bring two apples to class. They drew the first apple — just sat down and drew it, the way you'd expect. Then they cut it in half, then into quarters, then ate it. Then they drew the second apple.

The difference between the two drawings? Night and day.

Same student. Same hand. Same pencil. Completely different result — because the second time, they actually looked.

That single exercise contains one of the most important lessons in creative work, and it has almost nothing to do with drawing.

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The Difference Between Looking and Seeing

Most of us walk through the world thinking we're observing it. We're not. We're pattern-matching. Our brains are extraordinarily efficient machines, and efficiency means shortcuts. When you glance at an apple, your brain doesn't actually register the apple in front of you — it retrieves a stored mental model of "apple" and calls it a day.

This is useful for survival. It's terrible for creativity.

When Paul's students drew that first apple, they weren't drawing what was in front of them. They were drawing their idea of an apple — the cartoon shorthand their brain had filed away years ago. Round. Red. Maybe a little stem. Done.

But when they spent time with the second apple — really studying it, understanding its weight and texture and the way light fell across its surface — something shifted. They stopped drawing from memory and started drawing from reality. The result was incomparably richer.

Key Insight: The gap between a mediocre creative and a great one is rarely technical skill. It's the quality of their observation. Great creatives don't just look at the world — they interrogate it. They notice what everyone else glosses over.

This is the foundation of everything Paul built at TAXI. Not a house style. Not a formula. A commitment to genuinely seeing — the brief, the brand, the audience, the problem — before reaching for a solution.

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Brian Baumeister's Radical Lesson

Paul's New York neighbor Brian Baumeister teaches drawing. His mother was Dr. Betty Edwards, author of the landmark book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain — so you could say observation is literally in his DNA.

Baumeister's students arrive from all over the world. Bankers. Dentists. Truck drivers. None of them can draw. On day one, he asks them to look in a mirror and draw themselves. The results are predictably rough — the same mental shortcuts, the same stored symbols, the same "idea" of a face rather than the actual face staring back at them.

Then he spends a week teaching them. And at the end of that week, they draw themselves again.

The transformation is remarkable. Not because their hands suddenly became more skilled. But because their eyes did.

When Paul asked Baumeister how he teaches people to draw, his answer was simple and devastating:

"I don't teach them to draw. I teach them to look."

That's it. That's the whole thing. And it applies directly — completely — to advertising.

Pro Tip: Before you start any creative project, build in deliberate observation time. Don't research the category — inhabit it. Use the product. Talk to real customers. Sit in the environment where the audience actually lives. You're not looking for data points; you're looking for the thing everyone else missed.

When you genuinely understand what you're working with — the brand, the product, the human being you're trying to reach — the creative work becomes almost inevitable. The insight reveals itself. The idea finds its own shape. But you can't get there by skimming the surface.

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The Apple Exercise, Applied to Advertising

Here's how Paul's apple exercise translates to the work of making ads.

Think about the last brief you received. Your first instinct — that immediate creative impulse that fires before you've really dug in — is your "first apple drawing." It's your brain's shortcut. It's competent, probably. It might even be pretty good. But it's built on assumption, not observation.

The second drawing only happens after you've done the work of truly understanding the subject. That means:

• Understanding the product beyond its features. What does it actually do for people? Not the spec sheet answer — the human answer. Why does it matter in someone's day?
• Understanding the audience beyond demographics. A 35-44-year-old suburban parent isn't a person. What keeps them up at night? What do they secretly want? What do they already believe?
• Understanding the problem beyond the stated brief. Clients often tell you what they think the problem is. Great creatives look deeper and find what the problem actually is.

Paul built TAXI on this principle. When Pfizer came to them to launch Viagra — a prescription brand they literally couldn't talk about directly in consumer media — the obvious approach was impossible. You couldn't mention the problem. You couldn't mention the solution. You couldn't say almost anything.

Most agencies would have thrown up their hands. Paul's team looked harder. They found the human truth underneath the restriction, and they made work that cut through anyway. That's what genuine observation makes possible.

Key Insight: The brief is your first apple. It's a starting point, not a destination. The real creative work begins when you look past the brief and start asking what's actually true about this product, this person, and this moment.

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Observation Is a Trainable Skill

Here's the most important thing to understand about all of this: observation isn't a talent you're born with. It's a skill you build.

Brian Baumeister's students — bankers, dentists, truck drivers — transform in a single week. Not because they're naturally gifted. Because they're taught to pay attention differently.

Paul traces his own observational instincts back to childhood. He remembers his older brother pointing at the International Harvester logo — the letters I and H — and saying, "Look again." Paul looked again and saw it: a man on a tractor, hidden in plain sight. That moment of "oh my God" — that's what observation feels like when it works. The thing was always there. You just needed to actually look.

That experience shaped everything. It's why Paul's design work — from the McDonald's pizza launch to the pork producers logo — was always built on the principle of minimal effort, maximum story. You can only find that economy of expression when you've truly understood what you're working with.

Pro Tip: Train your observation muscle deliberately. Pick one thing each day — a product, a person, an ad you pass on the street — and spend five minutes genuinely studying it. What's actually there? What's surprising? What's been assumed? What's been missed? This isn't a creative exercise. It's a perceptual workout, and like any workout, consistency is what makes it stick.

You can also try Paul's apple exercise yourself. Before your next project, write down your first instincts — your "first drawing." Then do the deep observation work. Talk to users. Study the product. Sit with the brief. Then write down what you see now. The distance between those two lists is where your best work lives.

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Seeing Clearly as a Creative Prerequisite

Paul's art teacher didn't teach her students to draw. She taught them to look. And in doing so, she gave them something far more valuable than technique — she gave them a way of engaging with the world that would serve them for the rest of their lives.

This is the prerequisite to everything else in creative work. Strategy, craft, storytelling, execution — all of it depends on first having a clear, honest, genuinely curious understanding of what you're actually dealing with.

The mediocre creative rushes past this step. They've seen a brief like this before. They know what kind of ad this is. They reach for the familiar shape and fill it in.

The great creative slows down. They look at the apple — really look at it — before they pick up the pencil.

Paul spent his career building agencies, launching brands, and making work that lasted. And underneath all of it was this same simple discipline: the willingness to pay attention before presuming to have an answer.

See clearly first. Create powerfully second.

That's the sequence. And it starts with learning to look.