Is it the spark that comes every once in a while and hits us in the head? Is it an idea that works? Or a skill that we can apply daily and keep up the creative pace?
Is it still creative to copy ideas from others with no real self-implied twist to them? You know, the Bad artists copy, the great artists steal – syndrome. The more I work as a “creative” person, the more I feel how vague and stupid those processes are. There are as many ego’s as there are creative designers out there, that’s a fact. But I’m starting to doubt the fact that one can be creative in a team of other so-called (or not) creatives.
It gets out of hand easily, not really depending on personality. Maybe conflicts of interests or the fact that I’ve got the american high-school motto forced into me when I was still deciding what to do in life — “There’s no I in TEAM”. Yeah, but there’s a lot of other shit in there. How come the only projects I feel are worth doing are the ones that don’t need me to rely on anyone other than myself? As egomaniac as I am, this saddens me a bit. I constantly try to believe in people and re-invent the teamwork schemes into a living, breathing, creating organism. And then we get blown off by personal attitudes, psych problems, human incompatability.
And since we are a team of humans, being paid by other humans, to sell some worthless shit to yet another group, we creatives are surely a creatively evil bunch. And even in that evil we still feel the best working solo. The lone, creation wolf. The archetype is as old as it is boring. Even set aside the morality of my employers-employers (big evil corporations, y’know) I cannot think about ONE project that I did in a team in the last few years that I was satisfied with. And guess what? As far as I can tell, even if they were a success it was only a moderate one. So is it a myth? Is it just my head?