Creativity and Innovation: What’s going to break the industry

What is the end goal here? This may seem like another article, but really, it’s more than that. This is another step in breaking the industry you so strive for, becoming a creative, innovative designer. To quote Siyana Sokolova “Creativity is the driving force behind innovation and the incorporation of looking at things from a different perspective and freedom of restrictions by rules and written or unwritten norms.”

Being creative and innovative go together so fluidly, it’s a match made in heaven. Creativity is a skill that lets you see different ways to do things, where innovation is the ability to make those dreams a reality; put together, you get something of substance. There are a lot of dreamers out there, but you only ever hear about the ones that do something about it, as Bill Bernbach, co-founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach put it “An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.”

My focus for today is a pretty important part of being noticed, getting an internship, and the eventual getting a job. It’s going to require self-awareness, but also awareness of everything around you too. Being creative, and being innovative, both of which are things you are going to want to be if you’re going to get out there and break the industry you’re focused on.

You need to be self-aware of your own skills and realizing how you currently think about things, and how you think about solving problems you face. You can work this out by looking at your past work and thinking about the process you went through when coming to that conclusion, and determining whether or not you could have pushed that idea further, or better solved the problem. Working towards thinking more laterally and out of the box will help with your ability to solve problems in a more creative way. But to do this, there is also the awareness of everything that’s currently going on around you, knowing the current trends and problems so you know what needs fixing, and what can be changed, how you can tweak ideas about how things should be done is how you make something yours.

Being innovative is the next step in flourishing this creative mind your working on. You can be as creative as you like, as aware of the world as you can be, but if you can’t make anything real happen, or make any change in what you see, what’s the point? Pushing to make things happen is where success lies. To do this you need to turn your cant’s into cans, Annabel Action put it nicely when listing her “4 incredibly simple ways to become more innovative”, she wrote “Problems make us feel paralysed. When you meet a roadblock, it’s natural to throw your hands up and want to walk away. But next time you find yourself brainstorming on something and saying “We can’t because…” try starting the sentence “We can if…” instead.” I know in my years of getting anything done at all, that this is true, right down to writing this article. It’s important to note that these aren’t personality traits, they are skills that can be gained, it is not impossible to start thinking differently, and it’s not impossible to work out ways of making things happen, once you make a start, you can only get better.

Now to the reason all this is important, it’s what’s going to help when you’re making your portfolio for that dream job of yours. When you apply for a job, it’s highly likely, and I’ve learned from experience, that there is going to be more than just yourself applying for this job; co-founder of product design consultancy Morrama even mentioned the struggle in an article “Your portfolio will be compared to that of other designers, so it has to be better than everyone else’s. You will be critically judged against your peers so your work has to stand out and catch the eye of the person viewing it. These days you must be competent at graphic design to be a great product designer.”

So, what makes you the better candidate, the standout? You guessed it, being a creative and innovative designer. Being able to make connections others can’t see is going to make whatever you’re communicating memorable, finding new ways to present yourself and your portfolio. To be innovative is to be able to prove you’re able to tackle a problem and give a positive outcome, a trait that when you get down to it is what every employer is looking for. You need to be able to show who you are as a designer and a person, what makes you special and different, thinking laterally about how you go about this, challenging the current norm of just listing your hobbies and what you do on the weekend just isn’t what cuts it these days.

Think about it from the perspective of a potential employer, you have a stack of portfolios, each one is different, yet each one has a current trend through all of them, possibly the design trend being used by every designer at the time, and then there is one portfolio with all new designs in there filled with new ways to solve currently faced problems. Of course the different portfolio will be the successful one, it just screams “I know how to think for myself, I know how to solve problems differently” which is generally what is needed so meetings and discussions don’t become an echo chamber of all the same ideas. It’s what is being searched for, of course having skills in the relevant programs and an eye for what looks good will take you far, but if you can only use those skills to keep producing the same thing, what’s the point?

This is what design is about, the industry a sweatshop that churns out designs in a cookie cutter format day in, day out. Design trends are being made constantly by designers who start with a brief or a problem, and find a creative way about solving that problem, whether it be a layout issue or a new way of producing something. As Marcus Powe mentioned in his lecture to us “for innovation to succeed there needs to be a learning culture”, and this I can agree with, we need to be constantly learning what’s out there to know how we can challenge it.

But it’s not only us that needs to become more creative and innovative, it’s the business workforce as a whole, companies that keep in their comfort zones will be the first to go the way of Blockbuster. Companies are realising this idea and noting the benefits of hiring the crative innovators while moulding their current workforce to be the same. The benefits are noted by Denise R. Jacobs in her article “critical tools for sustained success: Creativity and innovation”, she wrote “Once you get on-board with promoting creativity and innovation within your organization, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. Even in the short-term, you’ll begin to see benefits such as improved teamwork and team cohesion, better employee engagement and productivity, increased attraction and retention of talented employees, and enhanced problem-solving and interaction.”

To sum up, being creative and innovative are not only important and relevant things to have in your belt, but necessary. You wont get far if you blend into the crowd, being the different designer that is able to think of new creative ways of tackling briefs and problems is a good start, but also being able to make your ideas happen, and finding ways of making your ideas happen is what is going to help you break the industry.

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-creativity-innovation-business-siyana-sokolova

http://www.dezeen.com/2015/10/23/advice-rob-bye-dezeen-jobs-design-graduates/

http://www.inc.com/the-muse/4-simple-ways-to-become-more-innovative.html

http://denisejacobs.com/blog/2014/11/12/creativity-and-innovation-sustainable-skills-for-success/