Day 54 — Demystify series 2/7: “Creative, Artistic, Innovative”
Who do you consider “creative”? Is it someone who graduated from art school? Is it the person who invented Post-It notes? And what’s the difference between Creative & Innovative?
- Definition & Examples
- How the confusion happened
- Why it’s important
- How to combine the power of all three
Definition & Example
Based on Merriam-Webster dictionary, here are the definition of these words:
- Creative: marked by the ability or power to create (create: to produce through imaginative skill).
- Artistic: of, relating to, or characteristic of art or artists ;
- Innovative: characterized by, tending to, or introducing innovations (Innovation: something new or to a change made to an existing product, idea, or field)
Simply put, being artistic usually links to the aesthetic aspect, while being creative is more about generating ideas (e.g. creative scientist finds new way to test DNA). Meanwhile, innovation is the creation or modification part of the existing solution to bring specific values to a group of people.
Examples
Let’s take Leonardo da Vinici’s work for example, his famous painting Mona Lisa’s Smile is a truly genius artistic work (left on the figure below), and his idea of human walking on water is very creative (middle on the figure), while his water-fetching machine which improve the existing machinery can be considered innovative (right on the figure).
Anyone can be creative
As the famous quote by Hugh MacLeod goes — “Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.” Indeed, we don’t need to go to art school to be creative. According to Time Magazine, “The Science of Creativity” special edition, those “AHA” creative moment comes from the neural network in our brain, when the network is simply moving matter around — a clever rearranging.
“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.” — Hugh MacLeod
I remember when I was in my first year in design school for formal industrial design training (designing cars, phone, furniture), I soon realized that some of the students were on the artistic side, while some were on the creative side; also there were some lucky ones that posses both talents. The funny thing is, back then the most creative guy we knew didn’t go to the design school. Instead, he went to engineering school and already possessed several patterns in his college age.
That being said, it’s important to understand that “anyone can be creative”, and the idea generation process can be a collective effort and not limited to “designers only”. Although art schools do provide an environment that encourages students “think outside the box”, it doesn’t necessarily mean all the art student or designers are “more creative” than the rest of the group. Actually, according to Time Magazine, creativity comes from the attitude/ appetite of:
- Being relentlessly curious;
- Seeking knowledge for its own sake;
- Retaining childlike sense of wonder.
How the confusion happened
Why do people think designers are the creative bunch? Back in 15th century, while scientist and engineer like Leonardo da Vinci were working on human biopsy or flying machine, detail drawing skill is crucial for them to be able to document what they observed, communicate their ideas, and iterate with less physical effort. The technical drawing skill also helps them imagine new ideas and brainstorm creative solutions. To many people, creative minds were presented in a aesthetic form, and hence the mental linkage of Creativity = Artistic.
Time travel to 1960’s, while advertising industry had such an influence, tons of money were invested in generating new advertisement ideas in order to boost sales volume. Creative talents were hired to compete their ideas on print media and TV commercials. As a result, audience associated creativity with beautiful design and artistic work.
Another important factor that contributes the confusion between Artistic and Creative, is that often time creative means “new”, “different than existing”; and because of that nature, it requires some sort of visual media so that the creator can effectively explain to others how this “new, never seen before” thing works.
Why is it important
With the design movement in 21st century like Design Thinking, Lean UX, there’s a lot of emphasis on user research, problem defining, and information modeling. However, arguably one of the most important aspect: “Creativity & Ideation” have way less voice and educational resource circulated. Merely relying on artistic talents to “be creative” doesn’t really help solve business problems and other non-UI problems.
Most of the articles about creative process all indicate similar direction: lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is not about efficiently deducting unwanted solutions to gradually refine the path, on contrary, is about not generating different ideas from different perspectives. Therefore, diversity help boost creativity, whether the group of people have design/art training or not.
How to combine the power of all three
We just went through lots of notion of creativity. Now, that’s not saying that being artistic — the aesthetic part is not important. In fact, it’s the opposite. In Dr. Don Norman’s book Emotional Design, he talks about “Attractive things work better”, a psychological phenomenon. That is, human can be influenced through the positive affect the beautiful things bring to us, and we perform tasks better with them because of the positive affect.
How do we combine the power of all three? The more important question is, when to prioritize what? Using the Design Thinking framework (as figure below), in the first two stages Empathize and Define, it’s important to identify “what needs to be created/improved”. Therefore, refining the problem we’re trying to solve, and prioritize them to create innovative solution would be the highest priority. Frameworks like SCAMPER or Disruptive Question help generative innovative ideas.
Once we have a clear direction what needs to be solved, then we can start generating different concepts to compare & contrast. In this stage, creativity is the most valuable assets. Brainstorm methods like Good Guys, Bad guys or Random Word can help create a good variety of different ideas. When it comes to actually visualize an idea, utilize tools like Crazy 8 to explore different possible solutions.
Conclusion
- Creative ideas can be innovative if they bring specific value to groups of people, and they can presented in an artistic way.
- Due to the way human process information, new and creative ideas often rely heavily on visual form to present themselves; hence the linkage and confusion between Creative & Artistic.
- The three skills are equally important to have in a project. In each stage of the product design/development, we can prioritize different skill set to fully benefit from the talents.
Do you have any methods you use to create artistic, creative, and innovative ideas? I’d love to learn from you.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.
