The Point Is…
I was recently at the Weapons of Mass Creation Fest in Cleveland, Ohio. For a desert rat, this was a journey of epic proportion. Okay, that’s overstating things a bit, but I did feel like a bit of an outsider – a tagalong in a group of genius.
One of these things is not like the other…
The excursion was as much mancation as it was professional development. Okay, that, too, is overstating things. It was more mancation than PD, but it proved fruitful on many levels. These, of course, will serve as the exigence for the piece…
What’s the point?
“20 Speakers. 20 Designers. 20 Bands.” This was the format for the event. Three venues triangulated in the hipster arts district of Uptown Cleveland housed each class of creative. The parade of creatives shared their processes, their work, their Creed cover bands… One question posed often was What’s the point? Why does this matter?
This wasn’t so much an emo-lament as much as it was a call for perspective amongst peers. The responses to this soul-searching were as diverse as the work on display.
As the outsider, though, I saw it much, much differently.
Good Design = Community
Jonce Walker, Maricopa County Sustainability Manager, recently drew attention to a discussion weighing the pros and cons of “new urbanism” and “landscape urbanism.” As a layman, engaging in the discussion was a purely academic exercise – my favorite type of exercise. I read through the post and decided that I believed it was important to have both – that without infrastructure and green space, patrons would be unlikely to leave their homes, thus perpetuating the challenges of isolation.
Cities as ghost towns.
Good design is essential to creating and maintaining community.
Community = Collaboration
A one-man collaboration is kind of like a two-man Voltron by yourself, which is neither fun nor productive. The definition of a two-man Voltron is not important. What is important is the concept of collaboration. It’s simple, intuitive, makes sense and is simple, but collaboration cannot happen in isolation. Community – in all of it’s iterations and variations – is the center piece for collaboration. Twitter. Tumblr. Dribble. The Book of Faces. Parks, bars and porches alike are the incubators for ideas and none of these ideas will hatch if you don’t take turns sitting on them.
Good design is essential to creating community.
Community is essential for collaboration.
Collaboration = Creativity
Indeed, there have been many people who have created impressive, wonderful, life-changing work in isolation. But it would be difficult to establish that these creators did so without any reference, inspiration or modeling from the work of their contemporaries or predecessors.
Without collaboration, we are left to our own devices. Sometimes, those “happy accidents” happen, but more often than not, creating in a vacuum will leave one guessing. Many artists choose to work in isolation, but I would assert that innovation and the avant garde happen when creatives push creatives to transcend the “needs” of the masses. If necessity is the mother of invention*, then creativity is the fuel for innovation.
Good design is essential to creating community.
Community is essential for collaboration.
Collaboration is a prerequisite for creativity.
Creativity = Prosperity
The future of life as we know if hinges on our ability to be creative. I am not being dramatic, here, though the sentiment could easily be interpreted as such. Now, more than ever, we are in need of creative problem solvers capable and willing to address the challenges plaguing the planet. A recent Newsweek article titled “The Creativity Crisis” captures the problem succinctly – as we become more intelligent, we become less creative. This assertion is derived from averages over several generations, but is a relevant consideration. The shear amount of information we are inundated with on a daily basis is filling our brains with stuff and snuffing out our creative fires. Compound this with the horrific slashing of creative programs in schools (arts, music, etc.) and the smoking gun is not a mystery.
In order to right the ship and pull out of the ridiculous traps we’ve set for ourselves, we not only need now, but will continue to need creatives to lead the charge to help shift the status quo. Film, literature, design, web development, music, food, etc – all of these require creative, enterprising individuals to lead the charge. Without creatives, we are left to the tools and devices of the myopic, self-serving machine.
Good design is essential to creating community.
Community is essential for collaboration.
Collaboration is a prerequisite for creativity.
Creativity is the key to prosperity.
So what?
Not that this is any answer or magic bullet, but we need people to continue to push creative boundaries so that we are not lost in our own intelligence. Many of the speakers at WMC Fest beckoned one another to not take themselves to seriously – after all, it’s only design. And while this is certainly sound advise, it is addressing the individual ego of the designer. Do not take one’s self too seriously, but do take seriously the need for creativity, collaboration and community.
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*Innovation - It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention. This may or may not be true as humans are inherently lazy and driven by an economic urge to make themselves better off – more for less. The fine line between want and need is based largely in how one prioritizes their day-to day. The reality of it all is that want is the mother of invention, not need.
