Where does original creative inspiration come from?

Original is a very big word, in the hypothetical sense.

Last summer, Kenjiro Sano, creator of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic logo, endured every creative’s worst nightmare under the scrutiny of the world media. As Tokyo’s Olympic committee unveiled his work, Belgian designer Olivier Debie claimed that it plagiarised his own identity for Théâtre de Liège in 2011. The committee subsequently went back to the creative drawing board.

Last year also saw Adidas successfully suing teen fashion brand Forever 21 for creating clothing featuring “their” three stripes. And Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke were ordered to pay out $7.4m to the family of Marvin Gaye because their song Blurred Lines allegedly took a little too much inspiration from an original Marvin Gaye song, prompting Pharrell Williams to state,“The verdict handicaps any creator out there who is making something that might be inspired by something else.”

He has a point.

I once had a lecturer in graphic communication who taught that in design, nothing hasn’t been done before. We may not have agreed with him, but it was useful in raising a fundamental question about originality and where our inspiration — conscious or otherwise — comes from.

It’s an interesting one to ponder. Whilst we know that being copied is the most sincere form of flattery, when does the balance tip? When does it become something negative?

Many successful businesses have been founded on taking what others have done and appropriating their ideas as a basis for their own development. Apple took IBM’s basic PC and turned it into something different and built a global empire that caused IBM to have to rewrite its entire business strategy. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken things a step further, inviting car companies to do appropriate Tesla’s original ideas, by making all of the electric car company’s patents available for public use — his argument is that their technology will make the world a better place and should be available to everyone. And as DJs have moved into mainstream pop music over the past twenty five years, sampling has become the norm in creating “original” tracks.

So, what exactly IS original?

Tough call.

The thing is, in a passive state, we may see and hear things just walking down the street that subliminally impact our psyche and influence our feelings. The colours on that butterfly. The shapes in the graffiti on that train carriage. The rhythm of the rain on that beer can. Often, we’ll come up with ideas without necessarily understanding or even remembering where they came from — perhaps years after we were originally exposed to the “trigger”.
Then there is the altogether different debate about whether two humans can have the same idea and execute it in an almost identical manner, something that genuinely seemed to have been the case in the Olympic identity furore.

But the question is, what, truly, is originality? Is it the idea? Could it be the way that idea is delivered? Inspiration comes from many sources, but an increasingly litigious global culture is creating a tough climate across all creative disciplines, where it is now considered reasonable to demand proof of source. Could we slow this US led trend? In truth, probably not.

We believe that it rests with every creative not just to come up with that original idea, but to create the right conditions for that idea, too. Conditions which will enable it to flourish, to “own” a space where it can be seen in an original way and work as hard as possible. It’s critical that we, as creatives, engage real rigour in our processes to draw out the finest execution. To deliver it in the most innovative way. To make something which cannot possibly be interpreted as anything else. The core idea should always be just one facet of our work , the starting point. The rest will help us to protect our ideas, as far as is possible, in the world at large.