Feeling…Seen
This past week, I watched a Skillshare class called “Things Organized Neatly” by Sarah Parkinson-Howe. It was the latest assignment in my weekly workshops with my uber-creative boss. In the class, Sarah demonstrates how to simply create graphic representations of everyday items from her grocery list, and then “neatly organize” a layout composition of those items. Immediately, I felt like I had been seen. This is a graphic design class? And it’s about organization? This is going to be more fun than wine tasting in the Virginia countryside before a Beyonce concert.
I realize how odd that makes me sound, so allow me to explain. When I was 6, I kept my first journal. I didn’t write about my day or draw pictures; instead, I made lists about literally anything. Friends in my 1st grade class, the shades of pink in my Crayola crayon box, things associated with Halloween, words that rhymed with “light”. And each word in the list had a color crudely scribbled over it (a more typical observation from a 6-year-old’s journal). It was the sort of compulsive organization that I’d imagine only a creative could have. Or rather, the sort of creativity that only a compulsive organizer could have. And this, to me, is just one of many examples that proves I was destined to fulfill my career as a UX-Designer-who-dabbles-in-other-creative-disciplines.
I feel this bright wave of pure joy whenever I design interactions, organize a site’s architecture, or synthesize data from user interviews. It feels like I’m organizing a list and intentionally applying color to each step in the process. “Okay, this website needs to have an About Page (mentally categorized as red), an FAQ page (yellow), a results page (blue), and an onboarding process (green)…that needs an entirely new list (and each step will be assigned a shade of green).” Oh, my god, do I have synesthesia?
Alas, I digress. For the class, I chose to create items on my desk. I had a pair of glasses, a coffee cup, a monitor, and of course, chapstick. I’m quite happy with my final work, but I think I enjoyed the process even more. It was cathartic, almost addictive, to complete this design challenge. Choosing an overarching theme, making a list of items within that theme, learning how to create a graphic representation of each item, and then arranging them in a way that’s appealing to the eye…I never had so much fun learning a new skill.
Upon completing the class, I realized that I have a preconceived notion about creativity: that it is free-flowing and abstract, and there are no rules. While that may be true in some cases, it’s not a hard definition. Nor am I incapable of free-flowing creativity. Never before had I considered my scribbled lists a work of art because, to me, it is order. But those lists are how I chose to express myself, aren’t they? That’s how my 6-year-old brain saw the world — just a bunch of groups of people, places, and things that share something in common. Patterns in everyday life scribbled on a page. I wonder what else in my brain remains to be unlocked with the key to creativity.
Originally published at https://www.victoriaakman.com on October 17, 2020.
