The common misconception of creativity and inspiration being these intangible, flaky blobs of energy just floating around at their own whim is straight up bullshit. I refrain from writing out of anger or frustration, but this does frustrate me. It straight up angers me. So, I’ll attempt to approach this topic from an educated point of view, a well-thought-out place rather than a menacing I-feel-you-are-all-wrong standing point.
I went to art school. I went to art school thinking I’ll be studying design. No, nope, nuh-uh. I spent three years delving into the art of ideation – a tedious process that culminates in the skill of coming up with pitches on the spot regardless of shooting blind for a hit of inspiration. There are exercises to make your brain juice flow. There are step-by-step methods that’ll produce loads of ideas. Granted, they’re not all good but that’s the point. They’re ideas none the less. And as they say, out of a hundred bad ideas usually comes one good one. So, there we are. It’s not about all your ideas being epiphanies but rather the ability to come up with and then filter through plausible ones, that are developable.
Really anyone can work with a good idea, with a master idea just as really anyone can colour by number – some might make more out of it but it doesn’t require much hardened skills to be able to work with that. An unready idea though, a seedling of a thought requires work, development, skills. And this is what I spent three years studying. I execute design projects but it’s mostly the ideas I get paid for. The ideas I am then able to develop into fully fleshed visualisations. I’m not a visionaire, I am an ideator.
Once in while a master idea meets a master developer and that’s when the prementioned magic happens. If one out of hundred ideas is good, call one out of thousand a great one. What I really want to get across is that ideas shouldn’t be credited to just happen. The once-in-a-blue-moon, spur-of-a-moment spike of inspiration is a sum of what’s been ruminating in the back of one’s mind for quite some time now. It’s the correct tools that aid bring them out in the daylight quicker, more efficient. It’s the know-how that enables the backtracking of an idea, building the referencing for it.
No idea is brand new. This is what we were taught on the first week of uni. Every idea, every creation is just a more or less new way of combining, collaging, referencing existing ideas, concepts, creations. It’s impossible to not repeat ad campaigns – to certain extent, at least – so it’s crucial we are aware of those references and credit them where needed. ‘I just thought of it’ no longer suffices as an explanation for exploitation of others’ work. Even if it was your own idea that you thought of yourself chances are you’ve seen it somewhere before, maybe not even taking notice of it consciously. There are no coincidences. Everything new is a sum of something old.
In the creative field so much is credited to talent and way too little to hard-earned skills. I don’t wonder why. If ideas and creativity are so commonly linked to something one just has then clearly everyone in the field was a master from day one. No, nope, nuh-uh. So, know your sources, credit your process, and leave the magic for novices.
I went to art school. I went to art school thinking I’ll be studying design. No, nope, nuh-uh. I spent three years delving into the art of ideation – a tedious process that culminates in the skill of coming up with pitches on the spot regardless of shooting blind for a hit of inspiration. There are exercises to make your brain juice flow. There are step-by-step methods that’ll produce loads of ideas. Granted, they’re not all good but that’s the point. They’re ideas none the less. And as they say, out of a hundred bad ideas usually comes one good one. So, there we are. It’s not about all your ideas being epiphanies but rather the ability to come up with and then filter through plausible ones, that are developable.
Really anyone can work with a good idea, with a master idea just as really anyone can colour by number – some might make more out of it but it doesn’t require much hardened skills to be able to work with that. An unready idea though, a seedling of a thought requires work, development, skills. And this is what I spent three years studying. I execute design projects but it’s mostly the ideas I get paid for. The ideas I am then able to develop into fully fleshed visualisations. I’m not a visionaire, I am an ideator.
Once in while a master idea meets a master developer and that’s when the prementioned magic happens. If one out of hundred ideas is good, call one out of thousand a great one. What I really want to get across is that ideas shouldn’t be credited to just happen. The once-in-a-blue-moon, spur-of-a-moment spike of inspiration is a sum of what’s been ruminating in the back of one’s mind for quite some time now. It’s the correct tools that aid bring them out in the daylight quicker, more efficient. It’s the know-how that enables the backtracking of an idea, building the referencing for it.
No idea is brand new. This is what we were taught on the first week of uni. Every idea, every creation is just a more or less new way of combining, collaging, referencing existing ideas, concepts, creations. It’s impossible to not repeat ad campaigns – to certain extent, at least – so it’s crucial we are aware of those references and credit them where needed. ‘I just thought of it’ no longer suffices as an explanation for exploitation of others’ work. Even if it was your own idea that you thought of yourself chances are you’ve seen it somewhere before, maybe not even taking notice of it consciously. There are no coincidences. Everything new is a sum of something old.
In the creative field so much is credited to talent and way too little to hard-earned skills. I don’t wonder why. If ideas and creativity are so commonly linked to something one just has then clearly everyone in the field was a master from day one. No, nope, nuh-uh. So, know your sources, credit your process, and leave the magic for novices.
