Creativity

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[Tyler]

Meh, reasonable thesis, poor article. It read like a bitter emo teenager that can't get a job because no one "appreciates" her genius -- and she found three friends to quote that had the same experience. If only the man wouldn't hold them down!

The point she makes certainly has merit, but I think it is rather obvious. I suspect it's why most famous artists become so after their death.

[NathanA]

Just because something could be said to be creative doesn't necessarily mean it is good, useful or enjoyable to look at. I don't necessarily think our community looks down on creativity I think it looks down on crappy pipes hiding behind the false facade of creativity.

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[d.huber]

Great article, if you ask me. For a long time I've noticed that creativity is almost universally punished (unless and until it garners results) anywhere other than artistic communities. Sometimes even in artistic communities.

So far I've only noticed two ways to figure out if a creative idea is truly a good one: get feedback from your peers and betters (who are pursuing conformity to what's familiar) or step out into the unknown and see what happens. You'll get feedback either way but in one way, you get a product of group think and the other way you get a product of your own mind.

I think a healthy mixture of both approaches will lead a creative person down a path to implementing truly great ideas and discarding the ones that won't work. Learning to recognize the difference is one reason an artistic community is so helpful. If you're a creative type who is new to an artistic community, listening to people who are experienced and then implementing their advice into your creative projects will take you down this path.

Nathan is exactly right about people using creativity as an excuse for creating crap. Those people are lying to themselves more than anyone else.

There's a difference between creativity and technical ability. People who have a tendency towards technical ability can see a problem, learn the process by which to find the right solution, and implement the solution. People who have a tendency towards creativity can see a problem, find a solution independent and without knowledge of the usual process, and implement that solution. People with a tendency towards technical abilities can develop creative skills and vice versa, but everyone's tendencies will almost always show. Knowing where your tendencies lie is the first real step to understanding what your highest purpose in any community will be, but, for some, is the hardest step to take.

This is all in my opinion, of course.

[Tyler]

FWIW, I recommended it for its content. It didn't occur to me that the "girl" aspect would re-focus it into being all about her and "silly girl" mental shortcomings. It wouldn't have mattered to me if Stalin had written it. If you're right, you're right.

(IN MY OPINION )

Wow. Really? That's what you heard me say? I only wrote emo girl because a girl wrote it. I would have said emo boy if, at the end of the article I would have discovered a boy wrote it instead of a girl. So, if at the end of the article it would have said, Joseph Stalin, I would have said emo boy.

It's still comes across to me as sour grapes. What the heck does the author expect to happen? Of course non-conformity is resisted. That's necessary by definition.

I'll go re-read the article. Maybe I didn't give it careful enough attention.

Edit: I just re-read my first post. I didn't even say emo girl. I merely used the feminine pronoun (for obvious reasons). I have no clue how this could be considered a gender issue.

[WCannoy]

Ok, here's something I know a thing or two about.

Most employers who say they want creativity only *think* they want creativity, but in fact they are only looking for efficiency in what is traditionally thought of as a creative role. The actual creative process is rarely efficient.

As you all know, I left pipemaking in 2006. By early 2007 I was working as a production artist for a publishing company, a position secured largely by demonstration of my creativity. The vast majority of my job was to create ads and prepare them for print. Ooooohhh, creating ads!!! Sounds like a perfect fit for a creative, right? Nope. I had to create anywhere from 50 to 80 ads each day. This is a production environment that leaves little time for the creative process. Admittedly, I demonstrated an inability to work efficiently as I spent too much time on tweaking each ad creatively for maximum effect. There were occasions where I was tasked with designing a cover, or some other 'one off' piece of art, and the higher-ups always seemed to love what I came up with. Never less, I was 'let go' after a year because I just wasn't fast enough.

I quickly found myself employed in the art department at another publishing company, hired on at more than the usual starting rate based on my portfolio of creativity, and a promise of a quick pay increase not too far down the road. By then, I think I had learned my lesson and tried to focus my efforts on working quickly and efficiently. I quickly became the 'go to' guy in the art department for getting ads done reliably, quickly, and correctly the first time. But the promise of a quick pay increase never panned out. See, this time, I was in a room full of guys doing ads, and although my direct supervisors were pulling for a raise for me, the one with the say-so was not part of the art department. He was an administrator who considered all of us 'ad monkeys' to be the same, and a dime a dozen.

After about a year and a half of that, I had the opportunity to join a company that owned a wide range of brands and businesses as their art director. Again, the owner of the company himself hired me based on my portfolio of work and creativity. I was tired of the publishing company/production artist atmosphere, so I cut back my hours at the publishing company to part-time and went to work full time in the art director position. This is where things get really interesting!

Now, this 'art director' position was really appealing, although I didn't really 'direct' anybody except myself. I was still an ad monkey, but I would be my own ad monkey, answering to nobody but the owner of the company, and the pay was great. It started off as the highest hourly wage I had ever earned and with plenty of overtime, and it didn't take long for the owner to convince me to leave the publishing company all together for even more money, on salary instead of hourly, and an official title change from Art Director to 'Marketing Director' (still, director of no one... it was just words on a business card, but some pretty cool words with a pretty nice salary to go with it!)

I was the best paid, most glorified ad monkey ever, and I had earned it on the back of nothing more than my creativity!

Well, that's where the fairy tale job ended. Turns out, the owner didn't want to let me do my job. He thought he wanted my creativity, but every time I devised an innovative new ad campaign, laid out plans for a branding package, or produced a flash video to promote an event on a street-side LED display, he was right behind me changing all the copy, all the colors, all the fonts, all the layout, until ultimately it ended up mimicking all of the other advertising materials out there... There was no final product that I was proud of, happy with, or would even admit to having a hand in.

This went on for about four months before I got frustrated to the point that I quit... Well, I didn't quit, not really. I just stopped showing up. When I went in to pick up what I thought would be my final paycheck, the payroll department said that the owner was holding it and wanted to see me. So, I went to see him... he handed me my check and asked where I had been that week. I told him I wasn't coming in because he didn't need me. I told him he could go out and hire any high-school kid with a copy of Photoshop to sit there and translate his instructions into advertising materials.

He was not looking for creativity. None of these companies were truly looking for creativity, they were looking for production, and I was getting out of the production business.

That was the last "job" for me. I delved into pursuing arts after that, which brought me full circle back to pipemaking.

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[Sasquatch]

The basic assumption in the article is that the things which went untried (restricted by management, budget, time etc) would have been successful, and add into that the assumption that it would indeed have been more successful (or the other side of that coin, that the "less creative" solution would be less successful). It's not the case. (This isn't holier-than-thou ism - I'm one of these people.)

Most of the "If only they'd listened to me..." people in the world operate on this principle, and it does them no end of harm. Sure, there are great scientists, leading ad-men, avant-garde artists.... lots of people stand out because of their great leaps of intuition or ability. But the assumption that if you are out of step you are a step ahead is bullshit. You're just out of step.

And what that means is you have to walk alone, which is fine. That's what I do and I'm reasonably successful at it as a carpenter.

Interestingly, as a pipe maker, I focus more on other issues, generally technical ones. In fact I was called a name the other day by a Danish-school (creative?) pipe maker who shall remain anonymous (but it rhymes with Ernie Markle). The name was "craftsman". And if you think that was insulting to me, you're wrong. Rather it's praise. Because I'm NOT cutting new ground, I'm not blazing any kind of creative trail, nobody is copying my work or discussing my revolutionary ideas, and that's because there aren't any.

And yet pipe making is ostensibly my "creative outlet" so the whole thing is pretty ironic.

There are "out of step" pipe makers, and they are out of step in a bunch of different ways. Lee von Erck's stuff comes to mind. He's been making pipes longer than I've been alive I think, so I'm not going to offer much criticism of his work. But it ain't Danish.

What's the point? Probably don't have one. If I do, maybe it's that all we're doing here is making fucking pipes, and if someone wants to make them out of Space Shuttle Tile and toilet parts (sorry Nate ) that's up to them. If it sells, great. I make pipes out of ordinary stuff, and they are dead ordinary pipes, and people seem to want to buy them most of the time, because the vast portion of the population is dead regular and wants dead regular stuff. Pipes are a comfort to Joe Smoker, and nice pipes are a nicer comfort, part of his lifestyle. But most guys aren't buying twin-bowled purple monstrosities as their daily choice.

It's okay not to be the best in the world at something. It really is. How fucking egotistical is Ernie that he thinks he's doing something other than "craftsman" ship?

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[Tyler]

The basic assumption in the article is that the things which went untried (restricted by management, budget, time etc) would have been successful, and add into that the assumption that it would indeed have been more successful (or the other side of that coin, that the "less creative" solution would be less successful). It's not the case. (This isn't holier-than-thou ism - I'm one of these people.)

Most of the "If only they'd listened to me..." people in the world operate on this principle, and it does them no end of harm. Sure, there are great scientists, leading ad-men, avant-garde artists.... lots of people stand out because of their great leaps of intuition or ability. But the assumption that if you are out of step you are a step ahead is bullshit. You're just out of step.

And what that means is you have to walk alone, which is fine. That's what I do and I'm reasonably successful at it as a carpenter.

Interestingly, as a pipe maker, I focus more on other issues, generally technical ones. In fact I was called a name the other day by a Danish-school (creative?) pipe maker who shall remain anonymous (but it rhymes with Ernie Markle). The name was "craftsman". And if you think that was insulting to me, you're wrong. Rather it's praise. Because I'm NOT cutting new ground, I'm not blazing any kind of creative trail, nobody is copying my work or discussing my revolutionary ideas, and that's because there aren't any.

And yet pipe making is ostensibly my "creative outlet" so the whole thing is pretty ironic.

There are "out of step" pipe makers, and they are out of step in a bunch of different ways. Lee von Erck's stuff comes to mind. He's been making pipes longer than I've been alive I think, so I'm not going to offer much criticism of his work. But it ain't Danish.

What's the point? Probably don't have one. If I do, maybe it's that all we're doing here is making fucking pipes, and if someone wants to make them out of Space Shuttle Tile and toilet parts (sorry Nate ) that's up to them. If it sells, great. I make pipes out of ordinary stuff, and they are dead ordinary pipes, and people seem to want to buy them most of the time, because the vast portion of the population is dead regular and wants dead regular stuff. Pipes are a comfort to Joe Smoker, and nice pipes are a nicer comfort, part of his lifestyle. But most guys aren't buying twin-bowled purple monstrosities as their daily choice.

It's okay not to be the best in the world at something. It really is. How fucking egotistical is Ernie that he thinks he's doing something other than "craftsman" ship?

This is the most disturbing sentence I've ever posted:

Sas, I agree completely.




Your summary puts a finger on the sour grapes feel of the article to me.

[Sasquatch]

Yak, posting examples of people who were "out of step" and yet of great significance/talent/worth/whatever in no way is an argument against my position, which is that most people who are out of step are NOT of great significance/talent/worth/whatever.

It runs like this.

Some people who are out of step are geniuses.
I am out of step.

Therefore I am a genius.

It's bullshit.

Some animals that hop are rabbits.
I hop.
Therefore I'm a rabbit.
Ribbit!

God damn, that was almost a haiku.

[Sasquatch]

On the Stradivari argument I concur - performance of a craft at a high enough level blends into art without seams.

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[Sasquatch]

Fair enough on both counts.

In my experience, the "out of step" crowd is far more interesting and engaging (if sometimes only on their own terms). Pipesmokers, for example.

[kkendall]

I think Tyler is right - sour grapes.

There are a lot of careers that rely on following "best practices" to be successful (the IT world is one example).

There are other careers that rely on someone thinking outside the box to solve problems (in a former life I was a mechanical designer - and had to come up with some fairly unique ideas to solve a problem).

It all depends what you do.

When I was a designer and had a clean sheet of paper, there was nobody in sight. As soon as I had 6 lines on the paper, everybody (and their brothers) came out of the woodwork to "help" - it seemed it was just make sure their DNA was in the design.

On one project, the engineering director and another manager were looking over this final masterpiece, I walked up behind them and whispered "it won't work".

They seemed shocked by my opinion. I had to explain all the things that were working against the guy that had to use this fixture. This was an example of "design by committee" where some people thought they could flex their creative muscles, but failed. It reminded me of the cartoon of the OSHA race horse.

I told them I needed a week without "help". When it was done, we built the fixture and it worked. It was expensive, but when you need to hold rediculous tolerances, it usually is. Only after the project was done did I find out that Boing designed a couple of fixtures and none of them worked. (glad I didn't know that until I was done!)

So - it really just depends on what you do. Some fields arent looking for creativity, some are. Do you want a "creative accountant" in your financial department?

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[Yak]

Deleted as irrelevant.

[KurtHuhn]

This is the most disturbing sentence I've ever posted:

Sas, I agree completely.

Most of this discussion has been well above my pay grade - except for what Sas posted. I'd have to say it's pretty much my entire feel on the subject of why I do what I do, and how I go about doing it.

--K

[LatakiaLover]

I have no clue how this could be considered a gender issue.

Because Yak. He's a slippery one.