“To design something really well you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something – chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.”

– Steve Jobs

This convergent thinking is crucial to divergent invention and evolution.

The world thrives on this type of end result.  A great product, service new mythological commerce led environment.

Yet as these end points are judged winners and losers so too are those creatives who make them – judged without groking what they are all about.

A great HR/recruiter will have instinct… they will get what you are about… 

This quote above swings me around to the key challenge facing diversely experienced creatives.  Those key individuals are often the first to go – why?  Because others find them challenging.

They are the ones who are curious, instinctive, analytical,  smart and yet something about them is annoying (they are different and it shows).

Protectionism

One of the biggest disasters in the creative career industry to emerge over the past 30 years is institutionalised unprofessionalism.  Those guilty posses finite ability to fill in boxes and jealously guard too much risk.

As a trickle down designers have been generally heading in a few directions for practice none of which do a lot for UK when compared to the music industry or the Mary Quant/Conran prime era – excluding architecture, salvation resting with  Mr. Dixon and McQueen of course.  UK design loss includes creatives working in:

   Other work

      Niche/industrial

         Academia

               Retail

                    Overseas

That we have so few examples of UK design success belies that fact that we are a nation with huge reserves of creative sav.  There has been a cultural shift that has affected the way we view ourselves.

We have been taken from one primarily unique British industrial place to another corporate peer approval setting… led by a rounding down, politics and banking… we now we are conditioned to act more than ever as they do… as administrative peers

1960-70s UK design and manufacture decline 

FACT: In the past 10 years there has been an high loss in University teaching positions matched by high university administrative employment drives.  Many talented teachers and creatives now work in bars and offices.

The key decline and design death of the UK automobile industry is a great example of UK old school corporate getting it catastrophically wrong.  This coincided then with the ‘Common Market‘ approach and today in the deplorable migration of design and manufacture to Asia and China.

UK design has always included the making and proving.

Prime example here is the death of the British icon the Morris, Austin Mini. It’s subsequent reinvention by German car maker BMW has lost the orginal delicate refined features for the sake of an overly aggressive profile. The follow on from the Mini the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina sank the British car design industry because 1. the new models were plumb ugly. 2. there was little in the way of innovative processes to support the growth of new ideas after the furor of the mini (the Range Rover gave us the flipside of the coin – but no new design coped with the main challenge to create a mid range,  family 4 door saloon car).  In the 60s and 70s the nation followed British Leyland because BL became our new design beacon – along with furniture store Habitat (the inspirational fountain of Ikea).  The loss of this I believe has affected ‘brand’ UK design psychology till this day.

But what really died was the public perception and pride in design talent of Britain.  

USA don’t suffer that today with the likes of Steve Jobs do they?

Stagnation Trend

Today our UK design industry flirts with the modern.  And it ends there.

One of my concerns is that a core human right to knowledge (which is a thing entirely based on the imagination and creativity) has been farmed out from those who need it most to those who can pay through the nose for it.  UK youth 14-24 age group. Our employment psychology is mapped out on lines that still denigrate creativity and preference the tick in the box.  We have few examples of as Ken Robertson puts it serves the modern era.

Steve Jobs can be and exceptional pain to work for yet supakudos inspirational – because he is the perfect visionary designer who believes in risk and change.

Jobs succeeded not to solely form up stunning planet changing PD but to cut through the wall of hostility to get through each day – his world is one of the most hostile commercial corporate environments.  

I got this quote from the book The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun. What he says about that Jobs quote above is flawed:

“The only criticism I have of this quote is that it implies something special about creative people that can’t be obtained by noncreative people. I don’t believe people are born into one of two exclusive piles of creative geniuses and unimaginative morons.”

It’s flawed because it is scared of saying something pragmatic, and risking rebuke and peer group rep. It is like saying you can use any cheese in top Italian cuisine… this is patently bull – 36 month Parmigiano Reggiano is very different to Kraft cheese slices.  Mother nature creates difference: our better ideals preserve equality – best we can.

What Scott fails to address is the reality: most of us have our creativity overrun by poorly perceived education and lack of creative vocational training initiatives.  

“In other words at the age of 3 most of us have the same faculty as Stephen Hawkin… at the age of 10 virtually none of us do.”

What happens in the intervening years?

Don’t rock the…

The boat is capsized – if we don’t push hard it will sink.  Boat rockers turn into great oars(people)men and women.

I saw a job ad the other day for an Industrial design position in UAE stating only applicants who have studied at RCA may apply.  That is frankly a disgrace for both client and HR – but mostly HR for not having the savvy to bite the bomb, point out the obvious and scrap the ad.  

For designer like me, who can look at a successful career on one side and today at not much work on my table on the other, my senses must remain as keen as ever to win the next client.  Gaining employment as a senior mid weight is incredible difficult for me because my CV shows too much “deviation” in the minds of HR – there’s not enough retail… they tell me.

And that is exactly what Steve Jobs is not saying.  Without a depth and range of experience (including LIFE experience) and reflection the design industry is at risk of remaining rudimentary and populated by those that cannot grow across the deep and wide potential they possess.

Give me another Job any day.

Perhaps life experience gives us the greatest cue: live twice the life, work twice as hard and dig away at the creative world.  There are a lot who are no longer able to do so.

God bless you Steve Jobs.

Nick Garrett

Thanks to http://fgiasson.com/blog/index.php/2005/07/23/what_creativity_is_for_steve_jobs_it_is/