FrankenDesign (How We Need to Stop Copying and Start Cultivating a Creative Culture)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
A funny thing has happened to the modern American church recently. Somewhere along the way, a few key leaders, perhaps unaware of the broad-sweeping influence they would eventually have, decided that visuals, design and themes could be leveraged to provide a framework for sermon content. The sermon series was born. The church designer was hired. The Creative Arts Design Experiential Conversational Picnic Rodeofest Planning Meeting was added to the calendar. Print budgets went up, clip art CDs went out, video cameras zoomed in and a sub-culture of creativity for church media was created. And while the current incarnation may walk around in different packaging, it is still rooted in an ancient desire to explain and support a message by engaging as many of the senses as possible.
So, what’s the problem? Isn’t this the missional mindset of learning a culture and then meeting people where they are? The church is attempting to use all the available tools to spread the Gospel and utilize a visual language that people understand—how can that possibly be a bad thing?
Simply put, we typically do it poorly. We have an over-inflated view of the artistic merit of our endeavors. We have an underdeveloped sense of the time, effort, skill and passion it takes to execute world class creative ideas.
Approximately 18 kazillion awesome things happen around us everyday, each with the potential to inspire and spark creativity in us, but more often than not we choose to flip through yet another graphic design annual or web design gallery, look at the same handful of magazines that everyone else in our field is flipping through and skim RSS feeds instead of trying to dig into research and study. We employ the tired, misused excuse of there being “nothing new under the sun” to justify our latest poorly-executed pop culture parody. At some point, we stop cultivating and start copying. Artists and designers walk in a strange tension between derivative inspiration and flat-out plagiarism. The former is natural and healthy, driven by curiosity and a desire to learn and experiment. The latter is a deadly combination of ignorance, laziness and lack of skill.
In the church’s deficiency of knowledge about our own history and our willful abdication of visual influence in the last 200 years, we have become artistically lazy, careless and negligent—as if nothing is truly at stake in the art and design we make. “Good enough” is often just that to us—as if God is only concerned with truth & justice, not beauty & craftsmanship as well. These passive, lazy art and design practices will consistently produce immature artists and designers who are incapable of creating compelling work. They will likely only produce sub-standard works while trying to play cultural catch-up with the rest of the world.
The church is currently experiencing a resurgence of creative expression, which is welcomed, but we’d rather not be bothered with using our brains when someone else has already done the work for us. And if Jesus didn’t explicitly command us to “Love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart, soul, and mind” in the Gospels, we might be able to justify our actions. But for the Christian, thinking, worshiping and working are inextricably linked by that command.
The newly (re)perceived need for creativity in the modern American church brings with it a swell of untrained, uneducated, under-skilled artists and designers into positions of visual influence. Those positions are frequently the first impression anyone has of the local church and of Jesus Christ. But most volunteers and staff members in these roles, myself included, have learned on the job, teaching ourselves along the way. So, where do we turn for education, inspiration and improvement? How does an untrained person worship God by using their mind and serve others by refining their creative talents?
First stop: your local library. It’s a free education in exchange for time and effort. I’ve spent the last six years trying to make up for not studying art or design in college and I’ve done it all for “a dollar fifty in late charges,” as Will Hunting would say. Don’t make the mistake of thinking there is a shortcut to learning the basics of your field, or that they are unnecessary. We can’t build a strong creative culture on top of a foundation full of holes, so take the time to build on solid ground.
Second stop: everywhere else. It’s not just about art and design; we need to begin looking outside our field(s) for inspiration. “The thing about architecture is that everybody reads too many [architecture] books. Architects look at architecture, but they don’t open their eyes and look beyond that,” says Mark Dytham, an architect himself. You’re probably not an architect, but you can replace “architecture” with your field of choice and it still rings true. Whatever it is that you do every day, chances are you spend your time reading, thinking, dreaming and planning similarly to many of your peers. Too little of that and you’re inept. But too much inward focus and you lack objectivity or the chance for original thought. Then it’s easy to slide into creative cruise control. And then it’s tempting to copy and not think.
As fashion designer Paul Smith challenges, “if you can’t find inspiration in the things around you, you’re not looking hard enough.” Magazine spreads from Smith’s Small Paul campaign make frequent appearances in my office. So do articles about new takes on craft, books on photography, architecture and interior design, a calendar of live performances, places to visit and a laptop full of links relating to installation art, new music, furniture, comfortable shoes and how to grow tomatoes for a few weeks longer than my neighbor. In fact, after building that initial foundation, I find the less graphic design I look at these days, the less my graphic design looks like everything else. I started collecting magazine grid layouts for inspiration to use in web design user interfaces. Hand-drawn lettering has helped to shake up my Swiss typography sensibilities. Gardening gets me out of the office and into nature. Morning walks give me time to let my mind wander, free from action items and pixel-pushing. You can’t cultivate anything new using the same raw materials you’ve used before. Get outside, literally and metaphorically, & watch the work you do branch out and improve.
Martin Luther wrote to pastors and preachers, “pray, read, study, be diligent… [T]his evil, shameful time is not the season for being lazy, for sleeping and snoring.” Should we, as artists and designers, be content to settle for good enough when good enough is so obviously “sleeping and snoring” in light of our culture? In an era where images are often more powerful than words, should the image-makers consistently choose the easiest solutions and abdicate any responsibility for the cultivation of a creative culture? Our challenge isn’t to strive for originality above all else; originality can quickly become a pressure-laden, unattainable goal and an idol to bow down before. Originality may likely be a byproduct of hard work, but it can’t be the goal if we haven’t already been diligently working towards competence in what we do.
Our challenge is to be craftsmen. To make good things. To kill the deformed, cobbled-together monster of pop culture references, derivative designs and lazy practices and watch God birth new creativity and skill in us. We can honor Him with the work of our hands and our minds. We can reflect the image we were created in by creating good things. We can build a culture of creativity. But it takes more work than we’ve been willing to give.
This article was originally published in the Sep/Oct 2008 issue of COLLIDE Magazine