A Formula for Creativity

“We are dealing in a magic realm. Nobody knows why or how it works.” – Rick Rubin

Some days, I curse my modernist training. Other times, I shake my fist at capitalism at large. The source of my frustration: this idea that there’s a formula for creativity that can be repeated endlessly and tapped for all its monetary value. It almost works that way, but in another, more important and real way, it doesn’t work that way at all. Let me try to untangle my brain in words.

I studied graphic design. Graphic design and modernist ideals and capitalism are comfortable bedfellows, and I learned how to follow well-researched guidelines to create layouts and moods that are easy to digest, surprising and enticing, helpful and clear, and good for business. There’s this mantra that you need to “know the rules before you break them” in graphic design, and I, a very good student, tried my hardest to absorb every graphic design rule so that I could do things right. I tried to learn the formula.

Then I started working. In social media. Where the ugliest shit you have ever seen in your entire life performs so amazingly well that you think to yourself “I’ll never design again.” Where the thing that works for one company or content creator is immediately replicated at a dizzying speed and scale because WE MUST CAPITALIZE ON WHAT WORKS! WE SIMPLY MUST!! This happens in all kinds of channels for all kinds of brands, not just the hellhole that is Meta’s ecosystem of utter evil. We must capture the zeitgeist and be what creativity is right now. We must use the formula. Allegedly.

I’m a freelancing creative. Are you aware of the myriad of ways that people capitalize (formulaically) on people like me? There are endless courses about how to run a creative business, how to break out of creative block, how to do this and that and how to be a working creative in a world that loves money so very much more than craft and expression. Guides along the lines of “follow these steps exactly and your creative business will bloom: Step One – like me, have a lucrative career first that lets you take three months off without pay in order to do free work for cool people so that you can build a portfolio ✌️”

Everything’s a fucking formula.

As a result, I’m sat here at home, feeling completely drained of any actual creative spark because what if I do creativity wrong? What if my design isn’t perfectly optimized for X format? What if no one sees this cool thing I’ve made specifically for the purpose of being seen as cool and contemporary? What if I’m out here being too different for people to hire me? It’s exhausting and unsettling, and I bet it’s not the reason most of us wanted creative careers.

So, what if we completely let go of every single formula in our creative lives? Just went out and tried the stuff we’ve been itching to try? No end goal aside from expressing ourselves and letting that shapeless THING that is trying to claw itself out (creatives know what I mean) take over for a bit? Wouldn’t it be so cool to see what on earth would happen then? A boy can dream.

Someone once asked me if I found it limiting to have to call myself a designer just because I studied design.

Yeah. I do. Because this thing we do is magic.