Espresso: Sir John Hegarty - What Is The Definition of Creativity?

0:00With creativity, I believe there's a dichotomy between putting your soul in your work and almost like selfish versus selfless creativity. and like I think you have to put your soul in in your work because otherwise what's the point in doing it on this side on the other side it that it has to there has to be some sort of empathy with whoever's buying that work or that art I believe talk to me about how you navigate that tension well this is the one about kind of I think you have to step back from that in a way before you can answer that question. Sure. So the way to, in a sense, begin that is to talk about the definition of creativity.

0:40Yep. And it's very important that this secret, this not secret, this superpower that we have all got. Yeah. All right. You know, animals, you know, separate us out from the animal kingdom. Animals, you know, don't get up in the morning and think I'd like to change the world. They get up in the morning and think I must eat, you know, whatever. Yeah. we have this superpower and it is, we don't sort of recognise it. I mean, it seems odd, doesn't it? But understanding it is fundamentally important. It's a superpower we've got. When you've got a power, you must understand that power. How do you define it?

1:18What can it do for you? How do you employ it? How do you engage with it? All of those things are fundamentally important. Now, if I say to somebody, okay, we're all creative. I accept that. Okay, yeah, right, great. now define creativity for me and what you tend to get is you'd get somebody going oh it's about getting people to look at things in a different way is to you know take disparate things put them together to make something different or something special or whatever it might be and you go yeah yeah no that's the process of creativity what is the philosophical heart of creativity what actually is it and so i this is important so you go right if it is that we're all creative uh then you define creativity as an expression of self that is creativity because we're creative so when we are expressing ourselves that's us being creative now i know i when I do that I get people going I'm not sure about that John okay and I say I understand what you're thinking right now okay how many times have you heard a film director a writer a novelist a poet a painter whatever talking about their next piece of work the phrase you'll hear more than anything else is, I wanted to say this, expression of self.

2:54That is creativity, an expression of self. So once you establish that, then obviously the more interesting self is, the more interesting your work is going to become. So that's fundamentally important. So then you get to how do you apply that in the commercial world? Yes. Which is really the question you're asking. And you go, well, you obviously, the first thing you do is, so therefore it's impossible to separate self from your creativity. It is what you feel or think. So the first thing to say is, if you're working on something you disapprove of, then you shouldn't be working on it. Yeah. Whether it's in commerce or whatever it might be.

3:36So you can't do it. So somebody comes along and says, you know, I can promote cigarettes and, you know, wherever. Would you do it? No, I don't approve of that. You won't do it. So you've got to make, you've got to in life make some critical judgments about who you work for, who you don't work for. But once you're in a kind of modern advertising agency and you're working on soap powder to motor cars to fashion to, you know, they're kind of, you know, everyday products. You have to have a sympathy. So therefore, what you're doing when you present and when you think about it, you think to yourself, well, what would I like?

4:12How would I like to be sold that? how would I think about a motor car? How do I? So you've got to be somebody who's very outward going, which great creative people are. You've got to be able to absorb things, take things in, have a point of view. Creativity is about embracing everything. And the more you embrace, the more it feeds back into you, because you have a point of view about it. And therefore, you end up working on things and being able to work on things where you put your point of view across. Now, the answer there is if your point of view isn't a very good one, then you're going to fail.

4:46You can't invent that point of view. And in a way, you know, people always ask this question about that. But all the great Renaissance artists had to do the same thing. You know, Leonardo da Vinci had to paint The Last Supper. He had to, well, this is how I see it. I've been briefed. You know, Michelangelo had to paint The Sistine Chapel. He had a complete disagreement with the Pope about certain things. But in the end, the Pope said, this is what you've got to do. You might say, well, I'm agnostic or I'm an atheist. Get up there and paint, you know. And artists have had to do that throughout history, you know.

5:22So you understand how to adapt. You understand how to take your creativity and apply it to something. If you're a designer, you're designing a motor car, you kind of design, you know, it might be if it's a family car, well, this is how I think a family car should be. You cannot separate self from the work you're doing. It's an impossibility. You can't do it. And then the answer is, of course, if you're not very good at doing that, you're not going to be very successful. Sorry, get a job as an Uber driver. Yeah. That is the reality. Because, you know, I always used to say to every creative team that presented work to me, I used to say, first question is, do you love it?

6:04and if they obviously would say well yes of course we love it we think it's great i say wonderful now we know two people love it now we've got to make sure a million people love it so then you move from there on to is my point of view one that's going to be accepted by millions of people you know matisse doesn't paint a picture and go i don't know if anybody's you know i mean he paints what he likes yeah fortunately matisse had a point of view and an attitude but people went wow i love what Matisse does. He didn't go out and do some research and go, oh, I think people like a lot of blue in paintings.

6:38I'm going to put a bit of blue in. They might like a bit of yellow. That could be good. No, he painted what he loved. And if you don't have a kind of a point of view that people find interesting and attractive, then you aren't going to succeed. There's a great line about writing, which is if you want to write a book that's going to be bought by millions, to write it for one person. Yes. It's a great line, that. I think what I love about what you're saying, John,

7:09is art or creativity is an expression of self, but it only works when you've got a point of view. And to have a great point of view, you need to almost be like a sponge and absorb. Of course you are. And I really believe different inputs equals different outputs. Yeah. So if you go and read really weird things, or go and just, I don't know, go and look at rabbits. Whatever, you're absorbing stuff. And then when you go back and look at the work, it's different. Absolutely. There was a great interview with J.K. Rowling, and I listened to it on the radio, and she wouldn't give any interviews until she'd finished all the books.

7:49Right. And the interviewer was talking about the books, and the interviewer asked the question. And the question was, when you're writing Harry Potter, he goes from the age of eight to about 16. Yeah. Eight to 16. What age child did you have in mind when you were writing it? And her answer, I didn't. I wrote it for myself. That's the answer. And that you've got to please yourself. Because if you're not pleasing yourself, how do you judge it? How do you evaluate it? How do you make it better? What do you do? You rely on somebody else telling you something?