Finding Wieden+Kennedy's John Jay and Breaking My Own Silos

Another weekend filled with visual feeding.  I realized how much it helps sensitize my mind to absorb the language of images.  I've never been good at interpreting visuals.  I've always been in a hurry to just respond to it and squeeze the words out of my mind to put on a page.  But I've learned from a friend that there is a great deal of respect for those who can restrain their creative flow to find a better wave.  

In my commonplace book for creative places online, I gather and collect information that helps me understand what I am up against.  I realize now how difficult visual arts can be.  Understanding visual arts becomes a totally different thought process.  Meaning can be muddled or watered down.  Some on the other hand can be exaggerated.  All in the language of photographs, color, page spreads and short phrases.  As I writer, I find this really fascinating because it's quite the opposite from my own process of choosing words and writing miles of them to describe a thought or an experience or a memory.  Communicating visually feels like gathering all the thoughts and putting them in one space where those who read or watch  the message feel some kind of endless resonation to what is being said.

My favorite find today is the video of John Jay from Wieden+Kennedy.  This video reminds me of the kind of person I want to become, the principles I want to espouse, the people I want to emulate and work with.  Thanks to Ragnar Frey author of createmake.com who is also a collector of stories about creative people.

His words speak a lot of truth for me.  Work environments are jungles that can eat you alive when you are not careful and prepared to adapt.  Like an ecosystem, every living thing learns to adapt to its surroundings to survive.  The challenge of educated people (like myself) often comes from the fact that we are educated.  It's hard to break out of our silos and it is this that make us less creative.  Those who think they have been taught well and are ready to work and use what they have been taught are in for quite a big surprise.
I've always marveled at the thought of how creative genius begins to form after you have been educated on a specific body of knowledge.  Schooled people do not find their potential as they learn the academic route but they begin to understand their full capabilities when they are out in the field scrambling through an 8 to 5 job aching to survive the day.  My MBA degree only served its purpose in my field for about a few months.  What I learned through frameworks and case studies is not so much the content of study but the discipline of withstanding nerve-wracking business situations filled with imperfect information used to make urgent decisions.  No, it's not the intelligence that got me past the post-graduate school era of my life.  It's the values.  
I'm not a genius.  I can barely thumb through a Finance workbook without sweating.  But values are important.  If I lose these principles that guide my every move, I'd lose it completely.  
So yes, indeed the challenge of creativity is to be comfortable in this discomfort.  In fact, this discomfort is the breeding ground of innovation.  Let's start breaking silos right there.