Creativity as Draft
Writing this, I still struggled with organizing my thoughts in a way that makes sense for you, the readers. But how much of that fleeting thought, that creativity juice is taken away, or added to in the process of refining, finessing my words I wonder?
I have been in the creative realm under different forms and capacities, enough to realize one of my most pivotal impressions of the industries- Creativity is not as free form as I fantasized it to be. Maybe I am the naive one to not see that right from the get-go, but I am sure I am not the only one. And maybe I am the one that got that one unexciting, tedious design gig, but I know I'm not the only one either. I can't say that this thought stems from a frustrating design project, but maybe several.
As a graphic designer ( google definition: a person who combines text and pictures in advertisements, magazines, or books.), I am often the subject to the inquiries of work from others. I rely on existing or upcoming products and ideas to display my skill. Others works are vessels to my works, as funny as that sounds, for most of my career. And there is no problem with that, as we are all living symbiotically at some point in time, unless you also have a similar connotation of "being creative" like I used to.
Within a project cycle, there are countless times when I had to go back a few steps, or even back to square one, times when I had to align what my skill allows to match the visions of others. My creative instinct becomes first draft, 2nd draft, and list goes on. I said I am not the only one because you might be familiar with saving your files with something along the lines of an underscore and an incremental number each time: "Edit_1," "Projectbeta_ver2." Designers and creatives look forward to sending out that "final" edit as if that's the best representation of our ability. However, I need to make it clear here that the filtering process is not always a bad thing- sometimes the final version surprises you with how far you've improved your craft. At the end of the day, this depends on how you see and feel about it, the nature of the project and the people you collaborate with, whether it's a project with some friends or measurable work at a company.
Still, I crave for playgrounds where kids can be kids and creative liberty can be just what it sounds: expanding freely without judgement. Until then,...
