Is conforming damaging your creativity?

“I like how they do it. Can you make it look and feel like that?” As a creator, this phrase should fill you with more than a little dread. Of all the bold new ways to visualise a product or service, imitation is often what most people choose. This is a strange irony of our time. As more brands are created than ever before, each day they look more and more similar. Why?

Many reasons I suspect. But a significant one is the pressure to conform. 

We all do it to a greater or lesser degree. In day-to-day living - for most of us - there is no escaping its effect.

Airlines mostly look the same. Corporate logos are frequently unmemorable. Most websites (including this one) have their menu header horizontally at the page top. Most sneakers have laces.

Why not do what has been done before? After all, it often attracts an audience. It feels familiar. It gets results. Often this conformity is for good reason. Function dictates the form and provided it aligns with the broader story you want to tell to your audience, then fine.

But if your new idea holds the potential to disrupt an industry or a project you work on will protect a precious environment, is “can you make it look and feel like that” really going to work?

A sure way to become invisible and unnoticed is to create for approval. We all seek approval. From our family, at home and at work. It is an enduring human characteristic. But with 1.5 billion websites and 4.6 billion active internet users, standing out is hard. It will be even harder if you look similar to everyone else.

A solution? Create with authenticity. The moment you choose to create with authenticity, is the moment you leave average behind. So, what is it? Depending on who you are, authenticity means different things. For me, it means playing the music I want to play, not what I think people want to hear. Writing words without fear of criticism and creating imagery stemming from the uniqueness of my worldview. 

Sounds abstract, right? Here’s an example. A limited run handbag from a new boutique fashion house has just been launched. Your task: create a single page advert for upmarket magazines and newspapers to market the product. The tried and tested strategy? Beautiful female model, elegant artistic photography and obscure minimal text. The theory – the model represents the customers personal aspiration of attaining beauty and confidence, and the handbag is the vehicle to take them there. Sounds simple enough. 

This works for established global brands but remember your own brief: new small fashion house. What to do? Create with authenticity. If the established theory trades off selling confidence through idealised images, invert the tactic. Simple design, the product front and centre and an authentic message. ‘Beautiful handbags for confident women’, was a strap line I thought of.

Nonsense, I hear you say. What about the imagery that motivates the customers feelings? Surely, not everyone is going to be enticed by the product alone. You are almost certainly right. But it is not everyone we need. It is just a few. Creating for approval (aka everyone) leads to invisibility remember.

So why don’t more of us try it? Fear. Fear of being an outlier. Fear of being different. Fear that you won’t be understood. Not unreasonable concerns. Yet they are the barriers that need to be overcome if you want your work to be noticed in the world.   

Now don’t think I am against conformity, imitation and metoo as creative strategies. I’m not. You need order, established frameworks and systems. Without them, things would quickly become a mess. And whilst creating with authenticity is inherently subjective, a reality check soon hits once you reach the marketplace.

But that doesn’t mean, you shouldn’t try at the beginning of every creative project to create with authenticity and be bold in your beliefs for the story you want to tell.