Why Society Hates Creative People (And What To Do About It)

whether it's a musical Masterpiece or a beautifully crafted object Art and Design is a human experience that almost everyone can appreciate it has the power to invigorate you reawaken dormant memories or simply improve your quality of life and this is exactly how artists and designers feel when their work isn't recognized it takes time and a great deal of trial and error for Creative people to make beautiful work and it can be really discouraging when nobody cares about it all of these creative achievements are nothing short of magic these are all well-known masterpieces but there are

tens of thousands of other brilliant creative works that will never be heard seen or recognized why is there such a disparity between the creative cultural icons of our time and the artists and designers who are just as talented but remain overlooked why doesn't Society value creativity creative people are some of the most mocked and disdained people in society but also some of the most respected and celebrated all at the same time our lives are significantly improved because of creative work in this video we'll cover the problems of creativity and I'll tell you about some of

the solutions that I've had success with I'm not a world famous designer or anything but I am able to pick the types of clients that I want to work with which is something that most creative people would be pretty happy with the average person simply doesn't understand the amount of thought and consideration that goes into a creative Masterpiece this is David it's an iconic and world-renowned sculpture made by Michelangelo if you look at David's eyes up close you'll notice that each eye is looking in two slightly different directions his peoples are also hollowed out so

that they cast darker Shadows this is not an accident these visual tricks help to make David stare look intense and Alive it looks a bit weird when you're zoomed in like this but Michelangelo knew that people would be looking at the Statue from a distance and he took that into consideration there are literally thousands of decisions like this made in every great creative work whether it's a beautiful car design or a great piece of music or a beautiful sculpture this is true Mastery but most people don't notice these nuances because they just don't care in

the modern world convenience is King the less we understand unless we have to think the more successful we are if someone drives for us we don't have to think about driving anymore that's considered success if someone cleans our house for us that's success if we don't have to think about the small detail Tales of Our Lives that is the ultimate measure of success in the modern world as a designer myself pretty much my entire job is centered around not making you have to think when you're using a product that I make for you all we

care about is output and how it benefits us and we're all the same including you and me we mindlessly scroll through Instagram and other social media sites and see amazing acts of skill and talent without even giving them two seconds of thought when was the last time you actually sat down to watch movie credits roll through did you ever look at the visual effects teams did you ever look to see who that obscure actor was who had the little tiny role you probably almost never do none of us care because it's far easier to consume

creative Works than it is to reflect on them but in the case of movies at least the person is credited in most cases the designer or Creator is never credited for their work nobody knows the people behind the original iPhone for example I mean sure you might know Steve Jobs or the head designer Johnny Ive but what about the rest of the Geniuses who made it happen speaking of geniuses here are a couple of people who helped me make this video video maybe you'll actually read through it this time but I wouldn't blame you if

you don't and I'm not blaming anyone for this the modern world is incredibly overwhelming and we'd all go insane if we had to try and understand the Nuance of every detail of everything but it is a major reason why creative Pursuits just aren't valued it just takes so much time and effort and it doesn't directly impact us our emphasis on convenience hides the inner workings of something and we're actively discouraged from truly understanding and therefore appreciating great creative works I think you can start to see how the details behind David's Stare suddenly isn't really that

value to any of us those details are fundamental to creative work but ultimately don't matter to us and it bleeds into other aspects of creative production probably most importantly creative Pursuits are judged based on scale rather than quality or Merit most of us don't know how to evaluate creative Pursuits in any sort of conceptual philosophical or craftsmanship level so we really only focus on two things how much money it made and how many people know about it creativity can't be easily measured in any other way and that's a big problem in commercial or corporate contacts

even creatives themselves don't always know what's good or bad there's the constant issue of never knowing if your work is actually good there's a phenomenon known as the Ikea effect where people are willing to spend 63 percent more on Ikea furniture that they assembled themselves even if it's built the wrong way we tend to love our own ideas more than other people's ideas so it makes it really hard to evaluate the quality of your own work I might consider this a spectacular Masterpiece because my friend Jack and I made it when we were kids but

I'm not sure how much it's really worth to anybody else with most other professional Fields you're solving a concrete problem with design or art that can be the case but not always there are lots of intangibles any new idea that you present whether it's revolutionary or terrible is going to get the same reaction ridicule our default response to anything new that we don't know how to respond to is to mock it it's so difficult to tell whether you're on to something big or you're wasting your time which is a real issue with radical creative works

even the iPhone one of the most iconic product designs of our time was never a guaranteed success it's easy to look back on the original iPhone now and see why it would be successful but it wasn't so clear when it first launched five hundred dollars that is the most expensive phone in phone in the world and it doesn't appeal it's likely that we'd value creativity and craftsmanship as a society if we were actually encouraged to understand it it's not that surprising that creativity isn't valued but it actually gets even more complicated solving an open-ended design

problem or coming up with an artistic Masterpiece is like trying to solve a puzzle except all of the puzzle pieces are black the puzzle has no beginning or end and some of the pieces that are critically important to seeing the whole picture are hidden in weird places some are in couch cushions some of the pieces are up in a tree others are down by the beach it's incredibly inefficient and slow and laborious creativity is really disorganized and non-linear this is the absolute opposite of the way that successful businesses run businesses rely on organization and order

like I said before the biggest measure of success for Creative work in modern society is around how much money it makes or how well known it is creativity is incredibly difficult to make profitable because it's so unpredictable even if you do find that Perfect Design concept the people commissioning or work will usually reject it Mike and Business Development says it's an unproven idea Karen from marketing says there's not enough sales data on it it's not that they have bad intentions it's just that they have different interests that are centered around making the company money in

the safest way possible so when a creative person sees a groundbreaking and novel idea the administrators in the company just see a risky unproven thread so the thing is great design and art is inherently polarizing If Everyone likes the work it's probably not very good when Michelangelo presented the last judgment it was criticized for being too violent and having too much nudity Michelangelo depicts himself right here this sagging deformed body is his self-portrait and it represents the contempt he had for the patrons who commissioned him to do the work this is pretty much exactly how

I feel when I'm working with a really difficult client and you can't blame the patrons and business people of the world really I mean I know it's cool and edgy to say you want to disrupt the status quo or whatever but you're not going to make friends by telling people that the thing that they've been doing with great 6 success for 50 years is dumb I mean it's just not going to go well an unproven idea is really really risky you can be cautious or you can be creative but there's no such thing as a

cautious creative failure is a huge part of creativity but it's just not something that's tolerated in commercial settings if you're a designer or an artist think about how many ideas you come up with in a year that never actually make it past the concept phase thousands of thumbnail Concepts and quick sketches or Initial Ideas get tossed in the garbage in search of something better from a business standpoint all of these early ideas are just inefficient failures but from a creative standpoint they are absolutely essential to getting to the final product because failure isn't really tolerated

in commercial contexts fear of failure tends to paralyze us all and it's pretty much impossible to be creative if you're nervous or anxious in fact monetary incentives tend to be bad for coming up with creative ideas according to 51 studies analyzed by the London School of Economics Financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance if you want to kill creativity give people a reward for doing well that's why it's been said that the Nobel Prize is the tombstone on all great creative work so before I talk my way out of ever getting

hired for design Consulting work again I do want to mention that you can employ processes and systems for design work to reduce risk a lot of commercial creative work is done within the confines of a company's process while showing little bits of risk here and there so you don't blow up the whole damn building most of my paid Consulting work is centered around doing that but at that point I mean is it really creative in some ways yes I mean I guess setting up new processes can be creative in its own way but it's not

likely to yield revolutionary results it's more likely to yield incremental improvements which in all honesty is usually what companies are after anyway most people who work as designers are actually just following a very constrained process to create somewhat predictable proven results young designers and artists Focus pretty much all of their time on improving their craft rather than understanding how businesses operate so most of my time in design school is spent learning how to draw and make models rather than learning about how design fits into a larger business context the main thing that gets me or

you or any creative hired is their experience and expertise but knowledge and experience is the enemy of creativity because you're already making many assumptions about how the project should work it keeps us from seeing other decisions because we just go to the proven thing that worked in the past now there's nothing wrong with this I do this professionally all the time this is The Logical path if you're trying to be efficient after all but I would argue that it's not very creative the bottom line is that most professional work is about the bottom line are

you making the company more money if the answer is yes figure out how to make a process out of it and do it over and over again if not you're fired so brutal but it's true companies in society say that they value innovation or Divergent thinking and companies may even have Innovation programs but very few of them will ever go through the insane risk of going past the idea phase this is why most revolutionary creative work is done by people with nothing to lose they're also usually Outsiders for example Apple created the iPod after narrowly

escaping bankruptcy the movie Rocky was Sylvester Stallone's last-ditch effort to make it as a writer and an actor Coco Chanel Louis Vuitton Kanye West and many other rappers every single one of these creative powerhouses started with no money no prospects and nothing to lose I mean sure look there's plenty of spectacular creative work out there that was made by people who weren't desperate but most people won't take that leap if they're already comfortable even if you do make a successful creative work that's all people are going to want to see that's why there's like seven

Rocky movies or whatever at this point [Music] all right [Applause] imagine if Sylvester Stallone tried to do a completely different style of film everyone would either ignore it or just be annoyed by it once people sort of see you as the guy who plays Rocky or Rambo that's what they expect from you it's not just external pressure either once you start to identify with a certain style or category you kind of want to stick to it Rodney Mullen for example he's one of the most creative skateboarders to ever live he invented dozens of tricks and

he changed the way we approach the craft forever he won 35 out of 36 contests over 11 years winning isn't the word I wanted once the rest of the time you're just defending and you get into this like turtle posture you know well you're not doing it it usurp the joy of what I love to do because I was no longer doing it to create and have fun and when it died out from under me that was one of the most liberating things because I could create once these people have something to lose they slip

into comfort and stop innovating it's what Their audience wants and it's the safe bet for them success and recognition can destroy your creativity and I don't really blame any creative people for going this route I mean I even do this a lot in my own work after working so hard and finally striking gold it can be really tough to just walk away from a successful formula I know I might sound like a real pessimist right now there is a silver lining to all this but in order to come up with solution you have to fully

understand the problem creativity not being valued is not just society's fault there's a dark side to creative Industries and creative people are often Their Own Worst Enemy first I want to talk about Miller note their today's sponsor and it's a great tool for organizing creative projects as I've mentioned throughout this video creativity can be really messy and chaotic Miller note is a tool that I use to organize my thoughts when doing creative projects when I'm ready I can share the board with other people and team members and clients and they can actually add feedback and

we can collaborate more quickly it's basically like the walls of a creative Studio where everyone hangs up their work except it can be viewed from anywhere in the world it's really easy to start a project because there are over a hundred built-in templates available for designers photographers filmmakers and artists I actually use millinote to organize some ideas that I had when making this video I have a to-do list title and thumbnail ideas as well as inspiration images and videos and all of this helps me to get my creative projects done in an organized way I've

also used milanode on other client-based design projects with great results millinote is available for free with no time limit sign up using the link in the description below and start your next creative project using millinode okay so back to the video first of all creators are just not very good at negotiation because we put so much of ourselves into our work so it becomes very emotional and personal generally whoever's more invested in the outcome of a business negotiation will get the worst end of the deal we tend to only see the flaws in our own

work and this is great because it's what makes us improve our craft but it's hard to value your own work when you know it could be better many of the most celebrated creative Works actually lose money one of the most famous examples of this is the animators for the movie Life of Pi Rhythm and Hughes Studio was one of the most acclaimed animation and visual effects companies in the world and Life of Pi was a worldwide Blockbuster hit but after Rhythm and Hue Studio won an Oscar for their work in Life of Pi they had

to declare bankruptcy creators have been beaten down so much by Society by their teachers and themselves that they don't even see the value of their own work they think it's normal to be able to do what they do because they're surrounded by it all day I've had several instances where people try to give away design work to me for free or they give it to me for an insanely low rate to be fair I don't know what their financial situation is maybe they're struggling to pay rent so I want to be mindful of that but

please preserve the value of your expertise and get a side job rather than charge low rates for your creative work there's no shame in that there also isn't any real support system for creatives at least not any sort of formal one if you want to get feedback on your work or share it with other people you're more than welcome to join my Discord but otherwise there's no clear path unlike other fields like financial advisors doctors lawyers etc etc if we take Finance as an example there are programs to set students up with jobs in big

companies before they even graduate it's also understood that recent graduates don't know very much so they're mentored by senior members so that they can succeed meanwhile the design and art path is just like I don't know man try some art school and put yourself a hundred thousand dollars in debt and hopefully it all works out designers not only have to be creative with the work that they do they also need to be creative about how they make money from their skills established creative people tend to help the younger generation a lot less it's a very

zero-sum mentality this is essentially rooted in a Pursuit scarcity of opportunities plus massive Egos and design creative people know that their contribution to society is really hard to measure or quantify so they build up a big ego in order to make it seem like they're somewhat important they're actually encouraged to put other creative people's work down the thinking is that if you say everyone else's work is bad it must mean that you have high standards and your work is really good seniors designers please stop doing this lots of people see right through it it's just

super cringe the problem stems from something even deeper than that though most of the time we simply don't fit in and we know it I'll give you an example from my own life when I was in second grade the teachers would give students these little yellow star stickers for good behavior or completing an assignment or whatever else the students would put the stickers on their desk as a sort of badge of honor and the girl sitting across from me had like easily over a hundred of them all sort of in this neat little row and

almost all the other students had a bunch of star stickers on their desks too I think I had about seven the person across from me had well over 100 and I had seven look at all the stars you have I'll never be that good that was a very clear visual indicator to me like I just did not fit into the system and most creative people don't either Society wants you to be a good little worker bee and most creative people are Renegade Killer Bees creativity sometimes feels more like a curse than a gift you can't

escape your own thoughts and you want your ideas to be recognized but a lot of the time nobody cares and that's not an easy thing to deal with I know this sounds really negative but I promise you'll be more optimistic by the end of the video in order to address the problem we need to understand it creativity isn't just forgotten in modern society it's often aligned anytime you try to do something new or Innovative it's gonna be met with skepticism ridicule or even hostility I mentioned this earlier in the video but I want to give

you a specific example my friend Rafi saw Prince live in concert in 1981 and at that time Prince was an up-and-coming artist but he wasn't nearly as famous as he is now the audience didn't know what to make of him now he was this androgynous black man wearing bikini briefs and a trench coat singing really explicit sexual lyrics and he was singing his own unique blend of funk soul Rock r b and people just didn't really know where to place him was he Rick James was he Jimi Hendrix why was he dressed like that and

when people get confused about something new and creative they ridicule it and that's exactly what happened the audience turned on Prince this is actual audio from the concert [Applause] oh what you're hearing is a stadium of 94 000 people booing at one man in bikini briefs they were throwing food bottles and shoes at him and I can't even imagine how disappointing that must have been for Prince I mean he probably thought this was going to be his big break a chance to show the world his music and he comes to find that everybody hates him

and his work what's most spectacular about this story is that Prince had the conviction and the courage to move forward anyway he went on to become one of the most iconic musicians in modern history one thing that people forget about Prince is that in spite of his outrageous lyrics and weird fashion sense he's actually an incredibly talented musician he played every single instrument by himself on his debut album and he's a virtuoso guitarist I think it's important to mention that because he wasn't all just about shock value the thing is he was very talented he

was super talented but not all creative people are necessarily talented another inherent issue of creativity is that there's really no barrier to entry this can actually be a really good thing because it's accessible to anyone and anyone can engage in it but it can be a problem because anyone can call themselves an artist or a designer other professions are different because they have licenses or some sort of formal training if you don't know about medicine you go to a doctor the valued expert there if you can't fix your toilet you call a plumber but art

design music I mean almost everyone can do some kind of creative work at some basic level that doesn't mean it's going to be good but they can at least pick up a pencil and start drawing or bang on some drums or write a quick essay plus everyone wants to be creative on at least some level that makes the quality of creative work vary widely over abundance of creatives along with serious lack of business training drives the prices down for Creative work if two people call themselves designers but one launched several successful products to the market

and another just started tinkering around in Photoshop a few months ago they're both designers sure but one is far more skilled but on paper they look identical another thing is that the uncertainty of creativity is what makes it exciting but also exhausting you just never know how your work is going to be received there's a song called Losing My Edge by James Murphy of sound system in the opening line he speaks the words I'm Losing My Edge the kids are coming up from behind as you repeatedly get slapped in the face what he's trying to

communicate here is not exactly subtle James feels beaten down and he's tired at the time of writing this song He's 37 years old and he's been trying to make it in the music industry for almost 20 years with no success every rejection is like a slap in the face younger more talented artists are coming up from behind and he's just trudging through tired as hell ironically this is one song that helped catapult his career as one of the defining artists of the 2000s this is another example of an artist who had nothing to lose so

it took the ultimate Risk by putting himself out there now to be fair Prince and James Murphy are just two people out of millions who have tried to make it almost none of us will ever receive worldwide recognition or Acclaim so what's the Silver Lining here first of all presentation is everything all great creatives understand Showmanship whether it's reviewing an object that's actually cake and I iPhone unboxing or an isai Miyake fashion show presentation is everything these ISE mayake dresses are really cool but they wouldn't be nearly as cool if they were presented as just

a normal runway show if you're watching this you might be struggling as a creative person we all do becoming a designer is by far the hardest thing I've ever done I've had teachers especially designed professors tell me that I'm not good enough pretty much my entire life and some of them even told me I should drop out because I was wasting the rest of the classes time people would underestimate me and they probably underestimate you too I'm not a world famous designer and I probably never will be but I have achieved a moderate level of

success I'm a design Professor I make these videos for you I have enough client work to pick and choose the kinds of projects that I want to work on here's what I did maybe it'll help you if you love your craft just keep doing it don't stop you can't control anything about how your work is perceived but you can control the amount of work that you create here's another thing a lot of people will make a design or a piece of art and sit around and wait for it to take off do not wait you

either actively improve on it or you move on to the next project don't over analyze don't worry just go back to work and find ways to do it better the next time it will remove all of the anxiety you have around your lack of success this also does two things number one you're improving your craft and number two you're increasing your chances of someone recognizing your skills you're a Creator and creators create just like prints or LCD Soundsystem you need to press forward every artist and designer struggles with doubt even the biggest players in the

industry think about how much we would have lost If Prince had stopped playing music after his terrible concert in 1981 or if James Murphy stopped recording albums before writing his song Losing My Edge it all boils down to courage that's what my mentor Rafi tells me and I agree with it 100 I've come very close to quitting design entirely a few times but every time I'm about to quit I just go back to focusing on things that I find exciting and new and somehow things just sort of fall into a place this YouTube channel is

actually a great example of that I never expected it to go anywhere when I first started it but honestly it's probably one of the best things I've ever done for my design work if you're doing creative work for corporations or for money you have to play by the rules of business this video pretty clearly outlines the motivations of non-creative people and corporations they want to reduce risk so anytime you present creative work to an administrator you have to look at it through that lens if you do work for a client it's likely that you have

to compromise your vision in at least some way and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that you should do what's best for your client or your patrons or your fans working for corporations can be really disappointing if you don't have another creative Outlet that's why I have my personal projects and my YouTube channel to experiment with new ideas that I wouldn't want to risk my clients money on it keeps me ahead of the curve and forces me to constantly be exploring new ideas you should be doing the same thing explore different ways of presenting your

work explore different methods of execution just try new things constantly I'm not saying that you need to start a YouTube channel necessarily but you should always be going back to what made you excited about your craft in the first place explore new ideas and share them with others experiment with sharing your work in different ways you don't have to share it on a massive scale sometimes it's enough to just share it with a few close friends it's worth mentioning that I'm not just a designer I'm a musician as well and I've never made any real

money for being a musician but I've learned a lot about myself I've learned a lot about the world around me and I've learned a lot about other people through making music becoming a musician was probably one of the most enriching experiences of my entire life there's value in creation for its own sake there's nothing more life-affirming and courageous than the choice to create it's the choice to make the world a little bit better even if it's just for one person never forget that your work matters even if it only matters to you my good friend

Rafi and I are writing an entire book on this subject so if you enjoyed this video go click the link in the description if you want to get notified of when it gets published have a great day everyone I hope you learned something [Music]