We are all creative. Period.
My gut rumbling reaction when I hear the phrase “I am not creative.”
I was trying to think about a topic for my first post here on Medium. Nothing ever came to me, but that was mainly as result of me trying to think of a topic. To me personally, that is not right, and doesn’t work. Something just has to spark some interest in me to write about it. Tell my point of view, disagree or convince someone of my reasoning. As I said in my previous post, I tend to only write in sporadic moments to the point they nearly become a spontaneous annoyance. But, if you do catch my interest, I can and usually will talk your ear off.
The Email
This week in a company email, someone stated that they were not creative. Now, this is an old beef of mine, but I really dislike anyone saying that. I am not sure why, at this moment, but I have always tingled at the sound of anyone saying that. Not a good tingle, a horrible, gross and eerie tingle that one would get in those stories that include evil, creepy witches brewing up some evil potion. That statement sinks into my spine and hits the wrong nerve. It’s weird, I don’t spend time thinking about it. It just happens naturally, my hate for that statement.
Perhaps it is just a deep, personal ethos of mine: everyone is creative. Now that I really think about it, there are several instances in my life that contributes to this mindset of mine. First and foremost, perhaps a little background on creativity in my life.
Little Background
I’ve alway enjoyed drawing and coloring when I was growing up. I’d create crazy-long city-scapes on those connected printer paper, back in the day when they used to be joined together. I kept drawing throughout school and did art classes. But I always did it with the mindset, that this was like playing games — its fun — and I can’t believe I get to do this in school. I think I had the pleasure of sitting around friends and other classmates that had the same mindset. Of course, this was sitting in the middle of Michigan’s countryside, where art wasn’t taken seriously unless you took it seriously. I took pride in creating something from scratch. I ended up being pulled out of 9th grade drafting class by the art teacher, Mr. Simmons, asking why I didn’t sign up for art. Supposedly, there was some discussion between art teachers between middle and high-school on my behalf. Luckily, Mr. Simmons was a highly passionate art teacher. Thank groovy color trains for him. I signed up drafting at the time, since one of my passions was becoming an architect one day . . but after couple chats with the art teacher, I moved next door to art class. It was a good fit. I ended up taking art for all four years of high-school, which was extremely rare in that school, since the art teacher never accepted freshmen into art — he knew most people did it just to have an easy-A class. He must of saw some drive in me I wasn’t even aware of at the time.
Art class back then was fun and relaxing. Somewhere to go to listen to music, eat some chips and chat with your friends. No one was egotistic about art (I didn’t know that side of art until I went to college) — it was an everyone-was-equal kind of atmosphere. I loved that. No pressure, no fucked-up school egos — just a group of us drawing in school.
I think that is where the seed was planted in my head that everyone is creative. I became friends with people that thought they were not creative, but they tried their best anyways. However at the end of the school year, most of their mindsets had been changed by what they had accomplished in class.
It is really remarkable about how many false assumptions we make about ourselves. Yet, its those assumptions that can hold you back.
Lessons
Now that I am older, I have come to realize how situations in the past have affected my thinking, my perception and my attitude. I had some extraordinary peers in the design program at Western Michigan University. Through group discussions and feedback sessions, you really get the sense that creativity is not just limited to things like talent and opinion — that it stems from something deeper. We all inherently like to create, to contribute, to make something better. Some of the best design advice I’ve ever received have come from ordinary people with remarkable mindsets. Your mindset truly does determine your drive, what you can accomplish, what you can imagine.
Perhaps it is much like the placebo effect, where if you think you are not creative, that personal decision will subconsciously affect your entire manner, including the work you do in the office. There was once this one assignment in an at foundation course in college, where we were to explore expressive gestures. This was before I learned about Kandinsky, a near idol of mine. We were to create sixty, two-second chalk gesture compositions. At the time I thought it was silly and the usual artistic-cliché kind of assignment, but contrary to my mindset, this assignment ended up being one of my favorites. Perhaps you need to get dumped out of your comfort zone through bold and repetitive practice to cleanse filthy mindsets that affect personal creative progress.
Creativity is more than just drawing, painting and designing beautiful user interfaces. Thinking alone is an act of creativity. Doctors who study and experiment for years to find a cure for an illness is just as creative as Kandinsky painting one of my favorite compositions. A single mother or father who stressfully finds the right routine, struggles through financial decisions and endures years of concentrated focus to make sure their child have the best life possible is also a form of creativity. Of course these are extremes and each have their own level of personal-ambiguity, but at the end of day, they are participating in the act of creating.
What Design Has Taught Me
I hope some of this makes sense, I know I am getting quite broad, big-picture thinking here. Being in the design industry for a comfortable amount of years so far, if you want some rewarding feedback, you actually should not ask a designer. If you desire some creative feedback on an existing campaign, product or app, you should ask someone that knows nothing about it. A clean slate. This isn’t anything new, but I believe it can have extraordinary insights into your work.
For the office, the key for feedback is open-minded discussions. I could not stress that enough. The number one behavior that has stuck with me from the design program in college, is understanding what having an open mind really means. Far too often, it is too easy to place our preconceptions and personal beliefs or styles in feedback discussions, which is one-hundred percent okay, but you need to be aware that those are your personal opinions. There’s nothing wrong with personal opinions, they can be bold and enlightening — but you need to be able to think the other way at the same time.
You must be able to have an completely open-mindset and the empathy to understand another person’s view on it. Whether you build photoshop documents, build iOS apps, or doodle uncontrollably when you are bored — we all have some instinct to create.
I suppose this brings me back to people saying they are not creative. I think it is mentally draining to work with people who don’t view the world with an open mindset. If you automatically start placing constraints in your head before you even read the project brief, you are starting with a dirty mind. Wash your mind and start that new project with a clear, empty focus.
