I remember a sleepy afternoon in third grade. I’d been puzzling over our new vocabulary list. I was having trouble spelling the word, determine. It was the same trouble I often had with words that didn’t spell quite the way they sounded. I decided to think of it as two words, deter & mine. To this day when I spell, determine, I think
of it as deter-mine.
Later still, that same afternoon, my mind drifted
to plans for how I was going to make a working model of
a steam shovel out of cut pieces of cardboard, glue, and string. I started work on it as soon as I got home. The final product was neither complicated, nor particularly elegant, but I could use it to scoop-up marbles and load them into
a small cardboard box.
I never played with the steam shovel after I made it.
Playing with it wasn’t as interesting as making it.
My spelling trick was useful, the steam shovel was just for fun. I thought of both as things I made. I liked making things. I didn’t care if I was making an idea or making stuff. In either case it was the business of making that appealed to me.
I made lots of stuff. Mom thought I was creative. She bought me colored pencils, poster paint, a tin of water-colors (with a picture of Micky Mouse on the cover), and colored modeling clay. She said I was an artist. I didn’t know what an artist was. I took her word for it.
I made many drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Mom called them art. To me they were just other things
I made, along with rude forts, bows & arrows and a tree-house.
Then, and since, I think of every project as a matter of making.
Much is made of the “creative process”. It’s typically spoken of in wondering tones that credit mysterious revelation beyond the understanding of the unchosen. Even honest artists aren’t particularly eager to dissuade belief in this magical aura.
Current ideas about “Creativity” come largely from ideas promoted by the avant-garde artists working a little before and after the turn of the twentieth century. Prior to that era art was thought of as craft. Craftmanship mattered more than creativity. Art, whether painting or novel writing, was judged by skill rather than originality.
Today art is judged by breakthrough originality called, “Creativity”.
I’ve spent most of my life working on projects typically considered creative: graphics; advertising; marketing; and writing.
I don’t think much about creativity.
I think about design.
Design is my adult word for making things.
Design is also the name I give to my way of thinking about the best way to make things. Many of these ideas are the same ideas I used in childhood to make things.
I first consider purpose, then parts, then construction. I try to make things as beautiful as I can but that can only happen after I’ve settled on purpose, parts, and construction.
It’s not as romantic as being “creative” - it is more accurate.
I’ve applied my notion of design to make, graphics, writing, music, and ideas. I’ve spent almost all of my working life designing: graphics; advertising concepts; marketing strategies; and writing copy for ads and marketing brochures.
I was paid for making those things.
In those same years I also wrote songs and continuously worked at improving my guitar skills. I didn’t get paid for any of that. I enjoyed the making part of music just the same.
Now, in retirement, I play guitar two hours every morning. In the afternoon I write for two hours. I don’t do much graphic design anymore, but I do apply my ideas about design to my writing. When I write it’s still about purpose, parts, and construction.
I don’t imagine many designers or writers take that approach. It sounds too stiff and mechanical. I suppose it is, but it’s always worked for me. It’s the way I’ve always made things.
In many ways I’m still a little kid that likes to make things.
Just older.