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When I came to Underground and people started referring to me as a “creative,” I felt very validated. I mean, I’ve always felt like I knew a thing or two about creativity. I hung out with the cool artist kids, smoking our disgusting clove cigarettes and posing for figure drawing. We didn’t associate much with the math and science geeks playing Magic in the cafeteria.

But a Newsweek special this week showed me that a lot of what I thought I knew about creativity is wrong. To wit:

Creativity is a right-brain function.

That’s only half the story. Creativity is about the two sides of the brain working together efficiently. A well-tuned creative mind approaches a problem both by coming up with all sorts of outlandish ideas (right brain), AND mining these ideas for hidden patterns, alternate meanings, and high-level abstractions (left brain). Individuals who are able to switch back and forth between these two modes are the most creative. So it doesn’t cut it to just be prolifically weird and wacky, you actually have to do something productive with the weirdness and wackness. Which reminds me of a kid I knew in high school, of whom it was said: “all cosmic sense, no common sense.”

Creativity is just for artists.

Nope. Not even a little bit. According to the Newsweek story, researchers compared engineering majors and music majors on a whole host of exercises designed to measure creativity, and their scores laid down on an identical spectrum. Creativity is about how you think, not what you think about.

Creativity can’t be taught.

Actually, it can. What a delightful surprise! Programs that “alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking” measurably improve creative problem solving skills over time.

Creativity can’t be measured.

Wrong again. The Torrance test (no, not this Torrance), a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist, is the gold standard in creativity assessment. And while nobody is saying it works perfectly, it is a shockingly accurate predictor of creative accomplishment—three times stronger than IQ. Below is an example of part of the test:

So creativity can be measured, and unfortunately it’s been undergoing a steep decline since the 1990s. There are a lot of theories about why—too much TV? The Internet? Miley Cyrus?—but whatever the cause, it’s a bad thing, because the world has a lot of big problems that will require the best creative minds working overtime (although apparently thinking on their own, rather than brainstorming).

So if you want to be a part of the creative revolution, you should drop what you’re doing and go hang out in a fantasy world for a while. Seriously. Pretend you and your friends are mermaids or something. It’s called a paracosm, and creating paracosms was found to be a common practice among most MacArthur “genius award” winners.

Except that the peak time for this kind of activity is ages 9-10, probably not you if you’re reading this blog. I guess that’s the age when all those science geeks were playing with their lame magic cards. Wonder what they’re doing now…

this is the last sentence of project h design’s mission, and it is a statement many of us, as creatives, have declared at some point of our lives {often in the same breath as “one day i will design my own font”}. project h is a non-profit organization based in the bay area that “connects the power of design to the people who need it most” and all that good stuff, including adaptive eyecare glasses and the HippoRoller. one can’t help but be inspired, especially when you share a common process + passion.

but a thought provoking article by bruce nussbaum asks, “is humanitarian design the new imperialism”? even more so, “does our desire to help do more harm than good?”

So where are we with humanitarian design? I know almost all of my Gen Y students want to do it because their value system is into doing good globally. Young designers in consultancies and corporations want to do humanitarian design for the same reason.

But should we take a moment now that the movement is gathering speed to ask whether or not American and European designers are collaborating with the right partners, learning from the best local people, and being as sensitive as they might to the colonial legacies of the countries they want to do good in. Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers? Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

his musings about technological colonialism are interesting and nussbaum has made a similar inquiry in the past, “is ‘green’ the ‘new imperialism’?” and this is where we catch ourselves being defensive and paralyzed at the same time. he makes a compelling argument so much so that we hesitate a moment and check our intentions, making sure our feet are still planted in the ground with enough forward momentum. we think about jiu jitsu. we ask ourselves, am i an imperialist? we wonder about that font that we still would like to design, one day. and in the meantime, the founder of project h, emily pilloton, responds to mr. nussbaum.

if the bp oil disaster happened in the bay.

www.ifitwasmyhome.com

Art from our very own Wendy MacNaughton is gracing the cover of 7×7 Magazine this month! She created a whimsical map of San Francisco for their July neighborhoods issue. You can purchase a signed, limited edition copy of the map here or from one of the bookstores mentioned on the link.

Not only is the map beautiful, but it comes in handy! Case in point: I was dining with a friend in SOMA a few days ago, and our cute waiter asked me where I lived. I pulled out Wendy’s handy map and proudly pointed out my neighborhood. Moral of the story: Wendy’s map might help you get a date!

Read the 7×7 profile and interview with Wendy, where she discusses how she likes to draw people on public transportation. She also likes to draw her colleagues in staff meetings, and I can tell you from experience that if you ever catch Wendy drawing you, you will feel a bubbly rush of joy and vanity. I highly recommend it.