Safe ideas get approved. Weird ideas get remembered. Know which one you’re going for.

Approval and memory are two different prizes, usually won by two different kinds of work. Something safe passes easily because it resembles things that already passed, and that resemblance is the whole reason it slides through. Something odd has to be argued for, and the arguing is part of why it stays in people’s heads afterwards. Neither one is the right answer every time.

Before you start, decide which prize you want from this particular thing. A class project with a rubric attached is a fine place to play it straight, and the video you make on Saturday for nobody’s grade is where the stranger version belongs.