Thinkcage

I’m a creative. There are many titles to describe the things I find myself doing in my professional life: Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Web Developer, Art Director, Product Designer, Software Designer, Information Architect, etc. To me those titles don’t matter so much, but what I do is create, design, make, build. I’m a creative. As in Creatives vs. Suits creative. But the thing is, this kind of creativity doesn’t feel pure — it feels forced, contrived.

I think high school was the most creative time of my life. I drew, painted, read, played, imagined and dreamed. Am I merely lamenting the loss of my childhood innocence or is there more to it? I often wonder why we grow up and what that means.

I spent most of my high school class time drawing. I drew my teachers, my friends, strange things, pretty things, and things that filled my imagination. I spent much of my free time reading. I read tons of novels — mostly of the heroic fantasy type; Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, Piers Anthony, etc. Those books filled my mind with places and people and ideas; Moorcock’s concepts of time and space amazed me. Much of what I drew was based on these ideas and images. Today I don’t really draw any of that stuff. I never draw just to draw. Sure, I fill a couple of sketchbooks a year but they are filled with website interfaces, site maps, code ideas, logo designs. And I don’t read those things anymore. I read heady books about design and science which are fascinating but don’t always inspire (With all apologies to the cited Kurzweil book by which I am fascinated and inspired and plan to cover here in detail very soon.). What I don’t know is why. Did I grow up and lose interest in those things, dismissing them as trite? Or did schedules and work leave them in the dust and put my imagination on a shelf?

Don’t get me wrong. I consider myself a creative person and I do solid, creative work. I consider myself an “idea person” foremost, but it’s cheapened by its business applications. See, in the real world you can be creative but it must be from 8 to 5. And it has to be a creative energy toward a company project and it has to meet business requirements and the client has to be happy and the artist doesn’t matter. In business, creativity is a process you go through to keep ideas in production. But what happens to the those out of the blue crazy ideas? Where do they go?

The general office/business environment seems to be the exact opposite of creative. The model is to bring in creatives and apply them to a problem. But what if it worked the opposite way? What if the environment fostered creation with no boundaries? Perhaps nothing useful as we know it would come out of it. The creatives might never build a website or design a logo. But what would they make?

What would you make?

I have been refreshed at work by a new wave of creativity — the opportunity to rethink everything in a collaborative environment. But as I look around the group as we argue ideas I wonder what we would make if no one told us what to make.