(David Campbell is a creative director and designer based in Lutruwita/Tasmania).
Creatives are pretty good at making stuff. It’s kind of our thing.
We’re also pretty good at destroying stuff too. Every new work we make has a tendency to destroy old work. A new social post takes the place of the last post, a new site renders the old one obsolete, a new cultural movement rises and redefines fashion and music by bumping off the old one. The cultural landscape moves in a constant cycle of destruction and creation. Every cultural shift requires an answer, and then another, and then another.
But if you spend enough time making new stuff, the elements often seem surprisingly familiar. Creation thrives on the recombination of pre-existing pieces, endlessly refreshed and rejuvenated by drawing new connections and meanings. Every new style lifts pieces from previous trends and then co-opts it for their own uses. The next new style will take a haircut from 25 years ago, a font from the 1800s (in last year’s texture-du-jour), the beat from one dance style, and the synth from another, combined in a way that would confuse and possibly horrify all of the original creators. This is great. Culture has alway worked this way.
But we’re also good at making problems too—often more than we solve. Every time I hear a designer talk about the need for greater environmental responsibility, I can’t help thinking about how we, as an industry, are a key driver of over-consumption. We make new software that tends to break many other other bits of software. We over-brand and over-complicate visual languages. We build AI systems which, aside from using criminal amounts of energy, also prove that computers are great at making stuff too, and much faster. Every time I hear someone say “we’re fine, look at how badly AI draws hands”, I think about how far it has come in the last five years, and try to imagine how far it’s going to go in the next five. And the five after that. Hands will not be an issue any more.
As the problems change, so too do the needs for creation, and the required creative skill set to meet them. More and more, the work will be about exercising judgment. It takes knowledge and experience to know what part of what stuff matters. It takes even more to know what parts need to be thrown away. Knowing when the new combination creates meaning, and when it’s made garbage. The craft of learning how to critically engage and respond. Of knowing when to call bullshit. And not just the craft of making, but the craft of functioning and working critically with whatever conditions you find yourself in. There's value to this—craftsmanship builds its own value.
In my more cynical moods, I often think that creative work consists of about nine different tricks, and if you can master at least four of them, you should be able to keep combining them in new ways ad infinitum. AI needs to be one of these tricks—it’s a tool, and all tools have their uses. Building community is another. Including the right voices, more often, will help us all against the mountain of bullshit that’s barreling towards us. Learning how to destroy stuff will be useful. When everyone’s trying to make everything look as good as possible, the easiest way to stand out is to make your work ugly. Maybe our creative future depends firstly, on our ability to actually listen really well, and then secondly, to hold to the belief that we can make some stuff slightly better than anyone else. It’s probably a slightly pathological mindset, while also being our job description.
Perhaps the biggest problem facing our industry is our language. For too long we’ve functioned as cheerleaders for our profession. Rather than speak honestly about our work, we tend to lie a little bit to our audiences, and quite a bit to ourselves.
When I was in university, I got the chance to speak to an older designer about his work, and elements of that conversation have stuck with me twenty years later. Not because he over-sold the profession, but because he spoke about the actual issues of making work. He spoke about the frustrations of doing what he did, about the constant need to prove himself, the endless demands from clients, the struggles with imposter syndrome and deadlines. But throughout all of what he said, in his tone and in his manner, he spoke with a quiet pride of the rare but real joy he got from making good work, the time and effort he took in his craftsmanship, and the possible rewards for doing this whole thing properly. It seemed like a worthy goal then. It seems even more so now.