Safetygoat

Creativity, definition of

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

My talented neice's fancy fruit bowl... very creative!

I’ve just read this article by Andy Rutledge on creativity, and while I cling to my creativity, I have to agree with his sentiments…for the most part.

He seems to believe that you need to be properly educated. He’s written other articles on creating a set curriculum and adding a few letters after your name.  I’m self-taught.  Some of the best designers I’ve met are also self-taught. I learned web stuff by little bit of luck, mediocre-levels of innate talent, and a lot of sheer will.

Growing up is hard to do

By doing things wrong, I actually knew why those rules were important.

Knowing the fundamentals and being able to apply them do make designs better.  Every designer with a few years under their belt should know that.  But I still think a creative mind still makes a fantastic job.  Any dunce with a bit of discipline can apply the principles to a bit of information.  That doesn’t make it good design.

Designers should be creative

The definition of creativity has been warped a bit.  Most people say that children are very creative.  My niece is a fantastic artist, and she comes up with some really good stuff.  In the past, I’ve often confused expressive creativity with useful creativity.

Design, by definition, is inherently  useful.  For most professions (architecture, engineering, and hey, why not… accounting), I think of it more like problem solving.  And those curious and perceptive will work and niggle until a design works, and every pixel works towards its goal.  Fitting components onto a page coherently and effectively requires more than just a knowledge of design fundamentals.  Sure, they give you a framework for putting things in place, but the elegance that comes from a beautiful design usually comes from creativity mixed with a whole lot of empathy (whether it be artistic, typographic, structural, or any other type of creativity).

More to learn

Some of the design experts that we’re supposed to admire don’t really impress me that much, and a lot of their stuff doesn’t strike me as unique or creative, but their mastery of design theory and care and attention to details do. Within the confines of a new distinction between useful and expressive creativity, most of the problems associated with the terminology disappears.  I can say that yes, they have solved the problem, so I guess they are being creative, but they haven’t found the most elegant solution (if your initial reaction is, “Meh!” then can it truly be the best design for that content?).

I ultimately think you can’t hide behind design’s rules either though, just as much as you can’t hide behind ‘creativity’.

Go ahead and read his article.   He really says it well.