Creativity From Without

I went to an interview today for a student government position and I was asked a lot of questions. After the interview, I couldn’t stop thinking about my responses. Was that okay to say? Was that what they wanted to hear? I kept coming back to the claim I made of being creative. Sure I can draw and everything, but what does it actually mean to be creative?

Recently in my design class, Prof. Housefield explained the etymology of design. ‘Design’ can be an unbelievably complicated word to try and unravel, due to the fact that it can be a noun or even a verb! But here in a quick 10-second recap, the Greek definition of design is: the indirect loss of possession. In fact, there is no such a thing as ‘new’ in the Greek language. It is just an illusion. They are saying that in trying to create something new, we are only covering up the original until we eventually forget about it. Then at some point, we return to the original, and it seems new again.

Upon realizing this, it occurred to me that nothing in a sense is new. Everything is just a rearrangement, or a different combination that we haven’t seen before. Or maybe we just forgot about it. As a design major, this brought a whole new light into what it meant to be a designer. This made so much sense to me. As creators we are always building new ideas off one another, making new formations and combinations. It didn’t make me sad that nothing I would ever be able to do would actually be original, but this knowledge actually took a load of pressure off of my shoulders! Technically I don’t have to come up with anything new, just make something amazing with what the world has given me :)

I hope that the interviewers don’t know the etymology of design. Because if they do, I basically just told them that I am a baker since all I do is mix stuff up!

image found from: http://tipnut.com/projectpics/bakingsupplies.jpg