Having recently attended the Cheltenham Design Festival (and written about it), it made me start to question the terminology by which we are being labelled – as designers. It is not the fault of the CDF per se – more something that was brought into sharp focus with endless references to the term ‘creative’ by those both attending as the audience and those taking to the stage as speakers.
I’m not talking about the ADJECTIVE or the VERB. I’m referring to the NOUN.
Apparently, sometime in the last few years, I have – unbeknownst to me – become ‘A CREATIVE’. Whilst I understand the context of this term, it has recently become the de-facto terminology for anyone that wields a pencil or has a vague working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite.
From what I understand, and casting my mind back to earlier stages in my career, it is the terminology of ad agencies of old…and the BIG ones with flashy atriums, multiple reception desks and foyer waterfalls. I say ‘old’…anything older than 12-15 years I guess. It was the term used to describe the room full of bespectacled, satchel wearing pencil wielders who ‘did stuff on a Mac, that wasn’t artworking’ by those who were ‘account handlers’ or ‘client liaison managers’. In white-walled meetings with clients all over the globe, such account handlers would say things like “We’ll have ‘our creatives’ look at that” as though it were akin to throwing a hunk of prime goat carcass into a cage filled with meat deprived lionesses.
Feed the brief (suitably morphed and mutated through countless middle management iterations) to the ‘creatives’ who would press their magic Mac buttons and shit would happen. It was a way of defining the people that did that specific part of the advertising/branding process and added a certain chutzpah to the ad-agency formula. By keeping the ‘creatives’ at arms length and away from the client (other than possibly a chance presentation at some stage once they had been de-flea-ed of course), it kept the magic of the process invisible and intangible. I can understand that logic within that world and it worked well. Bravo to them.
However, this moniker seems to have oozed through the very floorboards and latched itself – limpet-like – to every single, breathing person that claims to have a vaguely non-linear thought. I like to think of myself as creative. Similarly I like to think I am logical, pragmatic, flexible, visionary (OK…I’ll admit…slightly tenuous), knowledgeable and approachable. I am a fully formed combination of all of these aspects.
In fact, I am a f**king product DESIGNER.
Yes….DESIGNER. Not simply a ‘creative’.
I am trained to understand multiple facets of the product development process and my brain contains more than simply fuzzy creative thoughts that ‘suits’ couldn’t possibly understand. I have a Bachelor of Science degree. I know how shit works AND I can draw funky shapes on a marker pad (as my kids so eloquently put it…”Daddy colours in for a living.”) I apologise for getting slightly irate at this – I simply get frustrated by this constant need to badge a singular skill and delineate it for the sake of simplicity. If I am a so-called ‘creative’, am I also allowed to define myself by other such adjectives? Maybe as ‘an inspiring’? “Yes…we have a studio full of inspirings to work on your project Mr. Client…don’t you worry about a thing!”
In truth, and being slightly less dramatic, I can understand how it has come about. The design industry has (in times past) always struggled to visibly and confidently place itself as an equally viable business entity within the business community, always being seen as somewhat fluffy and superfluous, in comparison to the ever-present marketing, accounting and sales. The industry has made great strides in recent times and design has almost shot past itself (like an Angry Birds catapult) in attempting to gain credibility. I guess the rise in kickstarter campaigns and entrepreneurial startups has given rise to people badging themselves as ‘creatives’ in an attempt to put distance between them and the establishment – almost as a PR exercise – and to sound more enticing to the journalists looking for ‘maverick’ stories. It’s now ‘cool’ to be a creative business person. However, we seem to have gone from a time when no-one understood what ‘designers’ did, to a time when people started to ‘get it’ (thanks to Sir Ive) and now we’ve almost ubiquitised the term to a point where it means nothing and everything to everyone. If I refer to myself as a creative now, I feel like I’ve been farmed, like Neo in The Matrix.
I decided to be a product designer because it was a truly cross-disciplinary profession where I got to satisfy my creative urges, draw stuff, make stuff, solve stuff, and see stuff through to its fully formed conclusion. I was inspired by artists and engineers, architects and businessmen, sculptors and craftsmen. As we refer to ourselves in the blurb on our website “We are a strange combination of visionary, artist, engineer, marketeer and accountant”. It’s why it’s often so difficult for people to understand what we do – as it is simply too wide a skills spectrum to easily comprehend – in comparison to the straightforward and established profession definitions we have grown up understanding.
We may well BE creative, but I am not simply A creative. I know it might seem like I’m splitting hairs here, but I’m very proud of what we do and the skills that our profession require and to have us ‘badged’ in such a simplistic way just riles my shackles….or something like that.
Right. Spleen vented. Relax.
Over and out.
This article first appeared on the Square Banana Blog and on LinkedIn as a personal article.
Square Banana Ltd. was the business I owned and ran from 2005 until 2017 when it was acquired by Kinneir Dufort. Square Banana no longer exists but I have republished the posts from the Square Banana Blog on this site as an archive and for the interest of anyone who might find the content useful or insightful.
The opinions are always my own. Nobody else’s.
