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Greg Jackson, Design Director

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“I’ve worked with Thinkpen Design for more than a decade and they have never failed to deliver on creativity, quality, timeliness, and determined follow through—even when deadlines were unbelievably tight and unreasonable. We have shared some significant successes and sold a lot of books together!”
M. Gilroy, Mark Gilroy Creative 


“Two words: Relevant Creativity”
J. Rovenstine, Summerside Press

“Working with Thinkpen Design is an art director’s dream—not only are they incredibly gifted, they do the job with integrity, care about details, and are very professional, resourceful, and always on time.
M. Reagan, DaySpring

“Phenomenal conceptualism, skill, and presentation at its best. And still, better yet, no babysitting required—a publisher’s dream come true!”
D. Justus, Whitestone

“I’ve worked with Thinkpen Design over a number of years and they are very talented and creative designers. They’re excellent at uncovering what you really want in your design and then delivering above your expectations—on time, even in a crunch. I highly recommend their work and their ability to communicate effectively with clients.”
S. Janos, Harrison House

Main | Democratization of Content: Craft or Commodity? »
Monday
Sep192011

Creative Integrity

Let's face it. In our marketplace of ideas—of products, services, and communications—there is a fine line between crafting a fresh, creative expression and brazenly copying the preexisting. On the one hand, it is informing to research trends and stylistic conventions currently in fashion. But, on the other, it is cautioning to recognize that ours is a marketplace that values innovation and that goes to great lengths to protect the content creators through patents and intellectual property legislation among other means. So, what is best arbiter between well-researched market intelligence and a fresh creative expression?

Creative integrity.

This is an ethical standard I would like to suggest for a marketplace of ideas. Certainly it is wise that we make sure our artistic, authored, invented, or branded works don't violate any legal boundaries. But, it is quite another thing to self govern a level of creative integrity simply for integrity's sake.

To some degree we all have a finger in the market winds detecting changes in direction and being aware of what is blowing through at the moment. We are all consumers after all. And, marketers and product developers are keen to carefully study these winds, to make themselves students of market trends and goings on. It only makes sense that this well equips them to supply the marketplace with products and services from a thoughtful, calculated footing.

But, exercising a value of creative integrity, studying the marketplace ought not mean looking for ideas that can be knocked off with just enough tweaking to get away with it. Rather, creative integrity—allowing for collective inspiration from competitors—should very well be about looking for what has NOT been done already. This could be considered the opposite approach to creating a "me too." This is about offering something new—while addressing current trends and tastes—that the marketplace has not already seen from someone else's hands. Even more than that, by using the the word integrity it is about personally knowing that the marketing or product development endeavor is authentic, original, and truly an indigenous creation.

We are all creative and all have the capability to express ideas. So, being guided by a moral value of creative integrity, let's set a high standard of creating original expressions rather than being lazy copiers.

Yes. It requires work.