The myth of the “creative type” (and why you don’t need a black turtleneck to have great ideas)

During my 30 years working as a Creative Director in international advertising agencies, I witnessed a bizarre form of segregation.

In every agency, there is a department called “The Creative Department”. The people who work in it wear jeans and T-shirts, arrive late, and are paid to have ideas. Everyone else involved in producing advertising – the account managers, the strategists, the finance team, and the clients, wear suits – and in the vast majority of cases, believe they don’t have a creative bone in their bodies. Not surprisingly, this belief is strongly advanced by the “creatives”!

This division between “creatives” and “non-creatives” doesn’t just happen in ad agencies; it happens everywhere. Millions of intelligent, capable adults walk around believing that creativity is a rare genetic gift bestowed upon artists, musicians, and writers, and that they missed out in the DNA lottery.

For years, I was obsessed with a simple question: why do some people seem effortlessly creative while others are terrified of a blank page?

A turning point for me was listening to the late Sir Ken Robinson’s famous TED TALK– , who argued that we don’t learn to be creative as we grow up, we unlearn it.

Every child starts out fearless, curious, and willing to be wrong. Then they go to school, and later into the workplace, where they are taught that there is only one right answer, that mistakes are punished, and that conformity is rewarded. By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have had our creative confidence educated right out of us.

The mistake we make is assuming that creativity only looks one way; usually the loud, chaotic, “tortured artist” stereotype. In reality, psychological research shows that we all have different preferred thinking styles. And all are vital to the creative process.

So if you have spent your career telling yourself you aren’t “the creative type”, stop. The question is not “Are you creative?” but rather “How you are creative?”

Once you stop trying to think like someone else and start understanding how your own mind naturally solves problems, the blank page stops being intimidating.

And that’s when the real fun begins.