Don’t Get Crazy

Over at Slate, Jessica Olien explains how people don’t actually like creativity:

In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers–creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.

It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.
As Olien says in her post, part of creativity is uncertainty and people don’t like uncertainty.
I’d like to think as a web & mobile designer, my industry is the exception to this creativity bias, but it’s not. This is because designers might have the balls to try new, dangerous ideas, but clients don’t.
Clients want creative, but not too creative.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *