The Selfish Meme

On Creativity

Here’s a great series of video shorts done by production company Superfad. As their website explains:

” How do you define something that by definition has no rules? That’s exactly what Superfad set out to do with a new online series “On Creativity”, a series of short, informal interviews with a diverse range of designers, artists, musicians, animators and educators exploring a single topic: Creativity. With the differing points of view expressed by each person in their own words, we hope to inspire, confuse, provoke and delight.”

Loved the George Lois interview embedded above :)

Copy, transform, combine

Is remix culture all that bad? Or it lies at the center of every piece of creative that we produce?

Kirby Ferguson’s must watch docu-feature goes on to prove exactly that. Told in four parts, it is a story worth visiting, and re-visiting, as i did this past weekend.

In essence what Ferguson is saying is that there is no such thing as an original masterpiece. The films demonstrate in exquisite detail how everything from Led Zeppelin to Star Wars and from art to technology, not to mention science is based upon hundreds of uses of other people’s creations. 

While telling this story, Ferguson lays down the three laws of creativity: copy, transform & combine. And to me that’s the highlight of the series.

In our collective urge to worship originality, we tend to debunk ideas born out of a more obvious culture of remix. We tend to also debunk the maxim that no ideas are really original anymore as lazy thinking.

Perhaps its time for us to revisit this approach and acknowledge the fact that transforming and combining too is an art, and worthy of admiration or emulation.

Here are the links to watch part 2, part 3 and part 4.

To know more about the series,  read Neurobonkers’ super review and this Kirby Ferguson interview.

p.s. the first 2 mins of part 3 where Ferguson talks about social evolution really is about the way memes work as well :)

Remind me

Quirkiest music video I’ve come across in a long time :)

Superbly designed and produced, it mirrors the quirkiness of the track so well.

Guided mastery

So how do you build your creative confidence?

Here’s David Kelley answer. 

This talk resonated with me for two reasons.

Firstly, it works on the premise that all people can be “creative,” and therefore, it isn’t really a right of the few. Sure, some of us will always be better at coming up with creative solutions to problems than others, or some of us can articulate ideas better; but there is hope for everyone :)

Secondly, I like the idea of guided mastery, of encouraging & cajoling people to take small baby steps towards finding & nurturing their creative confidence. Its what all creative leaders should aspire to do, everyday.

As a footnote, this segregation of creative versus practical people is perhaps evident most in the profession of advertising where the former is adulated, and elevated to superstar status. As someone who works in advertising, I can confidently say that no other profession has contributed more towards destroying creative confidence.

Just ask the suits. 

For the record, this comes from an ex-suit who now is “creative” ;)