“If you hired a group of 5 creatives…” pt. 3
On LinkedIn recently we posed the question to the corporate and art world, “If you hired a group of 5 creatives, how long would it take you to ruin them?” We got such a response we are going to do this article in a series of posts. This is part 3.
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How can you retain your creative energy and inspiration over the long haul? And, how can managers / business owners cultivate an environment that helps their creatives to do so?
There’s probably no single answer to the question of whether corporations writ large quash creativity. I’ve worked in the marcom department of a large company (90,000 employees) and seen both sides of the coin. Under a supportive creative director, and working with a talented writer, our designers there did rather amazing things with the most mundane collateral — executive summaries for proposals, for example. In the same department, under a more repressive C.D. and under tighter brand restrictions, there was perhaps not as much creativity.
So I will suggest that it’s less a “macro” question of how corporations affect individuals, and more a “micro” question of how an individual’s department, manager, creative director, writers, and brand guidelines all intersect to create an environment that either promotes creativity or kills it.
I will say that ultimately, the responsibility for producing novel, interesting work on an ongoing basis lies with the creative him- or herself — and that producing poor work can’t be blamed on a corporation. Whether you work at a boutique or a brand giant, there’s no excuse for coasting. There’s just too much challenging, disgusting, weird, brilliant, crazy stuff out there to learn from and draw inspiration from — IF you take the initiative to get out there, open yourself to it, and soak it all in.
-Samantha
artwork: Grant Gilliland
