The Art Of Being Creative or why no such thing exists
Being a professional designer probably means you consume a lot of content related to your profession. Books, podcasts, courses, videos, and everything you can get your hands on. Do you think that you become more creative just because of your profession? Or does it mean you actively cultivate your brain with new experiences, ideas, and knowledge that ultimately translate into improvement in the work that you do?
Or, as popular belief, are designers super powerful people who can tap into some unknown magical realm of creativity only destined to a few?
I think that’s utterly bulsh*t, and in this blog post, I will give my piece of mind on why you shouldn’t think or speak of designers (including yourself) as creatives.
What is creativity anyway?
An American neuroscientist, Dr. David Eagleman, explains it best in his documentary The Creative Brain (you should look it up).
The process of creativity starts in the prefrontal cortex of our brain. As evolution occurred, the human brain developed distinct areas with the capacity to separate inputs from outputs and, as a result, be able to consider multiple solutions. So, instead of reacting — like other animals do — humans developed the ability to assess the situation.
As a result, creativity is processed in our brain not as the idea of something new — like we tend to believe — but as the product of inputs mixed with our personal experience. The ability to combine, invent, and imagine new processes is — scientifically — what makes us creatives and sets us apart from other animals.
Creativity comes in many forms and shapes.
Stating that creativity is a realm where only designers, illustrators, and artists live is not only wrong, but it’s insulting to doctors, teachers, and everyday folks who use their brains to solve problems. Or do you think that a teacher who found a way to engage with students and increase their level of attention in class is less creative than a designer?
Using terms such as creativity, creativities, and creatives to designate hard work, design projects, and folks who use their brains to solve problems causes a big mess and makes people believe that all designers do is tap into some 3rd-dimensional realm with magic rainbows.
In reality, the process of being creative is something that occurs in the most mundane activities, such as cooking. By using the fundamentals of cooking with your personal experience of flavors, recipes, and experiences from the past to test a different ingredient combination, you’re actually being creative. What I meant to say is that creativity isn’t exclusive to what you do or to working hours. You can be creative even with a corporate job, a manual job, or a scientific one. It’s more of a process that happens in our brain than a choice to choose a liberal profession.
Conclusion
I used to be one of those people who refer to designers and similar professionals as creatives. However, my view of the world has changed, and now I can see creative people across all ages and spectrum of society.
I’ve come to believe creativity in itself is not inherited. It isn’t something that some people have and others lack.
It’s cultivated, nurtured, and present in multiple forms across human development and professions, including but not limited to designers.
Taking advantage of a broad concept and turning it into something exclusive to designers doesn’t only make us look foolish but also feels like there’s something inaccessible about us. That’s just bad for business.
I suggest that collectively, we all try and make an effort to educate people on what we do and why we do it so they can understand there are processes, hard work, and much trial and error involved in what they think. That way, maybe everyone stops imagining the giant red button that designers press to activate creativity.
Related posts: Creativity process: The Creative Brain’ review
