The business of business isn't always business - sometimes it's art.

"Visuals are really important for the field of architecture so people can see what they're going to get before it happens," said Michael Grey Jones, an associate with Johnson Bailey Henderson McNeel Architects in Tupelo. "It's up to the artist part of the architect to do that."

Creativity is a commodity in the workforce, where the ability to think outside the proverbial box is often the key to innovation and increased profitability.

Naturally, someone painting a watercolor for her own enjoyment is less restricted than a guy designing a Website for a corporation.

"You have to be creative, but you also have to be cooperative," said 29-year-old Daron Pitts, a Website designer for RedMagnet® in Tupelo. "There's a balance that you have to maintain."

Those able to maintain that balance can enjoy a relatively comfortable bottom line while letting their artistic sides soar. It's a bargain that's led to job satisfaction for Ann Carter, 56, who gave up the painter's life (and pay) to be a landscape designer for Grady Gardens in Corinth.

"I like to create any way I can," she said. "I do it because I want to do it. I don't think I'd give it up even if I was a millionaire."

Like many creative types in the workforce, 40-year-old Jones' first love was art. He took numerous classes in high school, but decided to study construction when he entered the University of Southern Mississippi.

"I didn't feel like art was a career I would make a good living at," he said. "I really kind of dismissed the idea of going into art."

After some experience and soul searching, Jones realized the construction business wasn't the right fit, either.

"I fell into architecture through getting into construction but wanting to use the artistic part of my talents," he said. "To me, architecture is a mixture of art and science."

Pitts enjoyed drawing as a child, but the piano was his first love. He attended a music camp as a youngster and dedicated his life to the piano, eventually earning a bachelor of arts in contemporary Christian music.

"They basically trained us to go to Nashville and get a job in a Pizza Hut and start knocking on record industry doors," he said. "That wasn't for me."

Pitts took a job as a youth and music minister for a church in Tennessee, where he found himself once again involved in the visual arts.

"I did the church newsletter," he said. "At the same time, I got addicted to the Internet and designed the church's homepage. I gained all my experience on my own through searching the Web and looking at what other people were doing."

For Carter, the route to artistically stimulating employment started with the realization that most painters didn't make any money until after they died.

In 1995 - at the age of 50 - she entered Northeast Mississippi Community College to study landscape design. She immediately found skills she'd learned as a painter applied to her new profession.

"You walk around to get a feel for the light and shadow," she said. "If you want an area to appear bigger, you use plants that have small texture leaves, and pastel colors will give you depth. Flamboyant colors and large leaf plants tend to make everything smaller."

Before putting a potential landscape design on paper, she visualizes the layout in her head.

"When I was painting all the time, I wouldn't start a painting until I had visualized it for a week," she said. "I guess that carried over."

Carter's knowledge was augmented by information on irrigation, drainage and the fine art of pushing a wheelbarrow.

"The manual labor taught me to design with maintenance in mind," she said.

The final landscape design isn't Carter's alone. The same holds true for Jones and Pitts: The client pays the bills, so the client makes the final decisions.

"The first time I see an area, I start thinking of what I would do, but you have to listen to what they want you to do," Carter said. "Nine times out of 10, they say, 'What would you do?'"

Jones said much of his work is client-specific, but since he's the expert, he's able to suggest ideas the clients might not have thought of on their own. There also are natural laws that architects can't break, no matter what a client wants.

"As architects, we're responsible for the health and safety of the person in the building," he said. "That's something that doesn't change."

The purpose of Web design is to provide a site that suits the customer. Pitts prefers to have the customer involved in the beginning to give direction.

"Hopefully, a company has a basic idea like, 'Here's my logo and our color is black,'" he said. "If the company doesn't have an idea of what they want, we have to do it for them."

That means brainstorming ideas left and right until finding a design that suits the client.

"It's amazing the ideas that come out that can't be used. I find people who are totally non-graphics oriented give the best feedback," Pitts said. "Sometimes we get way off course and someone has to bring us back to reality. That's all part of it."

After all, commissions dry up for artists who don't please their patrons.