It is the conundrum of the artist that actual creativity
terrifies the people that are paying for creative work. Clients talk about
wanting the best ux experience and write briefs about breaking the mould, but in
the end have tremendous difficulty accepting unique solutions because they often
only understand what they’ve seen before (and what is being done by their
competition). As a result, we end up with compromised high street ecommerce
mobile sites that are indistinguishable from one another. Every article you will read about Steve Jobs references his
belief that focus groups are (were?) pointless because people don’t know what
they will want until they are presented with it. This is both the
challenge of creativity and the tragedy of genius.
It has been almost 400 years since Galileo was forced to
recant his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, and over 100 since Van
Gogh died penniless, having only ever sold one of his paintings. But how much
further have we evolved? As evidenced by the selling-out of Leonardo da Vinci’s
current exhibition at the Tate, the public are more than able, with the gift of
hindsight, to appreciate artistic mastery. Wander into a comparatively vacant
gallery of contemporary art however, and you will either find art students
contemplating the legitimacy of the creative vision, investors looking for a
growth asset, or somebody loudly declaring “That’s not art - I could do that!”
We can debate the difference between the validity of craft
and that of the idea at another time, but essentially, it was when the art
movement’s focus switched from the former to the latter that the general
populace lost its reverence for visual artists.
Now, even Geoffrey Boycott’s mother thinks she can do the
creative, yet in the world of mobile, people think of the technical build as
magic beyond their understanding. Yet is that really case? In reality, coding is
something that can be learned easily through study and experience by anyone with
a fledgling understanding of computer science, but truly creative design remains
limited to those with an innate artistic vision.
Contemporary digital production is more comparable to that of
Andy Warhol’s studio or even the studio of Leonardo himself, in which craftsmen
were often engaged to carry out the artist’s creative vision. Although these
craftsmen were certainly not unskilled, these roles recognised the separation
between the painter and the artist. As digital becomes the new medium, these two
roles have been distinctly segregated into that of design and
development.
As experienced by everyone in the design industry, it is
puzzling as to why many clients hire people with creative expertise when they
clearly feel that they can do a better job themselves. This is further
exacerbated when a client feels out of their depth on the coding side. The
problem is, even if you have or can resource the technical expertise of a
skilled craftsman, you will still need the creative vision of a designer to push
the project beyond generic boundaries. As with branding, or the Mona Lisa, it’s
better to trust in the creative expertise of the people you hire if you want a
product that approaches innovation.
