When I talk to students about creativity and skill I tend to refer to it as a spectrum. It’s a simple analogy, but one that allows me to get the idea of individualized progress across. If creativity is a spectrum, we all exist somewhere on it and our position within it is highly personalized.
Much has been written about creativity using the visual metaphor of the spectrum. Some deal specifically with the applied arts, while others take into account other skills such as entrepreneurship, leadership, and other aspects of business, — referring to them as a creative endeavors.
One model that mixes the two is presented in the article, Creativity is a spectrum: everyone is creative to varying degrees by author and speaker, Geena Matuson. There are a lot of great ideas presented in the piece that relates to current issues affecting those who consider themselves artists and those who consider themselves entrepreneurs, but Matuson presents a spectrum in which artists and entrepreneurs exist in the same space with poles representing “extreme feeling” and “extreme thinking”.
Progress across these “spectrum models” is more about the individual makeup of the person, how society has influenced that person’s creativity, and the individual perspectives that have developed as a result.
The model that I tend to use is much simpler and focuses primarily on creativity as a skill that can be developed as a result of periods of dedicated time, study, and practice. Momentum or advancement of the individual across the spectrum is, therefore, effort based, with poles that house those who consider themselves very advanced or “masters” of creative skill at one end, and those who sincerely believe that they “cannot draw and are not creative” at the other. The model also assumes that EVERYONE exists on this spectrum.
It’s a fairly rudimentary model, but one that at its base speaks to a few important facts:
Everyone has Creative Potential
The first is that everyone has the potential to be creative. If we were to interview those “non-creative” individuals as to why they feel they are not creative, we’d probably unearth some deep-seated trauma involving parental or authority-based units who ended up spewing nonsense to them about how there is no money to be made as an artist or creative professional, or they just outright attacked them with disparaging remarks regarding the person’s apparent lack of “talent”. This is way too common, and a leading reason why people perceive themselves as having no artistic or creative ability.
Creative Skill Building is a Lifelong Endeavor
If we were to look at our spectrum model and the distance between the poles there would be a series of blips representing where different individuals exist in their creative development and a line that represents the time, study, and practice we put into our work, or what we might also call “effort”. Creative skill (marketable skill) is built on effort.
Every challenge, every near-miss is a sign of growth, proof that you are stretching beyond what you thought you could do. ~ Danny Gregory
Progress from “non-creative” to “master” is a calculation based on the time, study, and practice we put into our work. If there is very little effort then we either remain stagnant on the spectrum, locked in a kind of non-progressive limbo, or our progress is so minimal that we don’t move much at all.
It is therefore possible to “time out” on the spectrum in which you never really make much (or any) progress during your lifespan and the potential is squandered. For this reason, creativity and skill is a highly individualized process.
Your Journey is Your Own
I know a lot of artists and designers that are overly concerned with what others are doing. Social media can be a motivational killer in that respect. If you are always comparing yourself to someone else (or where you are on the creative spectrum vs. others) then you are setting yourself up for failure. Our job is to continue to put in the effort, create on our own terms, and be fulfilled by the journey. You can’t do that if you’re always looking over your shoulder to see where the other runners are.
Marketability is a Result of Effort
If your goal is to be a full-time creative professional, then skill-building is going to play a large part in whether you can land work or not. Of course, there are other factors that come into play there — leadership, entrepreneurial skill, business sense, etc., but creative skill will be at the heart of making it as a creative pro. Because of that, continual progress across the spectrum is essential. It should be our lifelong endeavor as creative professionals to be constantly upgrading our skills so we remain marketable and working.
We are living in a time where more and more is demanded of creative professionals on a daily basis. There was a time when you could squeak by with less creative skill and more business and marketing know-how and things worked out well. Things are getting more complicated and complex every year, though, and most professionals I talk to feel desperate to keep up. Now we are standing on the precipice of AI, and the entire industry is going to change again. Even more reason why we cannot stand still.
We all need to move at our own pace and keep growing our skills. It is important to remember, though, that our progress is our own. We need to own it. Comparing ourselves to others is the antithesis of forward momentum. As things get more layered in an already complex industry, we need to step back, take a look at what we are doing, focus our progress, and bravely move in a forward direction.
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