One Day in Paradise: Creative Individuality Amongst the Crowd

One Day in Paradise:

Creative Individuality Amongst the Crowd

A thesis synopsis by Stefanie Brückler.
Illustration by Stefanie Brückler

Stefanie Brückler is an Austrian Graphic Designer and Illustrator currently based in New York. She graduated from Fh Joanneum in Graz, where she studied information & communication design.

“One day in Paradise: Creative Individuality Amongst the Crowd” was Stefanie’s final work (thesis) for her BA degree program in Information Design and highlights the difficulties young designers have to face, especially when starting out to establish themselves in the creative field. As a young designer, Stefanie was no stranger to these difficulties, which inspired her investigation into the topic of creative individuality.

Stefanie discusses and summaries her work to VMM, giving us further insight into the core meaning of her thesis and the messages embedded within for every creative individual and how to attain a paradise for themselves. 

German Title: Alle wollen ins Paradies. Ist man bloß ein Vogel unter vielen? 

Literally: “Everyone wants to go to paradise. But are you only one bird amongst many?”

The term, ‘To be one amongst many’ is in German an idiom that’s very figuratively stating that you are only a bird amongst many other birds. This  theme of birds and paradise intrigued me and I wanted to incorporate it through out my thesis as fun and ambiguous twists. 

Prospective designers strive to distinguish themselves from others and struggle with their definition of the self, especially while starting out. My thesis addresses the necessary requirements for young designers to build their own artistic and personal individuality and the significance of their individuality, questioning whether their longing for being different results in being just one amongst many. It covers topics such as taste, style and individuality as well as imitation, inspiration and identity. The thesis offers path breaking steps for young designers for creating one’s personal creative paradise and highlights the importance of balance and the exchange of ideas with other creative talents to reach their aim of creating their own paradise of uniqueness.

But the question is, is there even a paradise of creative uniqueness? At first glance, the answer would be no. As soon as you a designer start craving to be different from every other designer, you’re immediately becoming just the same as everyone else because realistically, everyone is working towards being unique! One is only one (bird) amongst many, without particular peculiarities.

However, if one pays enough attention to their environment, looking deeper into the concept of their taste, individuality, style and what that all stands for in relation to other designers, it is possible to create some sort of paradise for oneself. The most important factor is, to not force yourself into doing or creating something. Ideas have to breed for a while to fully develop and the practice of clarity, clearing one’s mind also goes a long way to help the process. 

A crucial step is to see and fully observe, travel if you can and get to know, learn and appreciate other environments and their cultural aesthetics as much as possible as you can find inspiration and ideas from the unlikeliest of places that have never yet been explored and just absorb everything throughout your journey and take all those impressions in. 

The Internet itself and all the works displayed by contemporary designers are great inspirations but I believe that young aspiring designers can push the creative boundary by not relying solely on the internet for inspiration. Those who tend to end up creating replica pieces that resembles the designers they take inspiration from which then takes away from their uniqueness as a new designer and fails to give you that edge needed to stand out from the crowd. It is great to have contemporary designers as inspirations but you need to explore further and deeper other areas that could open up deeper than surfaced based uniqueness if you know what I mean. One should never limit their creativity and originality with poor inspiration.

Throughout their career and evolution prospective designers have to develop a consciousness for their taste, concern themselves with their own identity and must learn how to use different styles and which consequences certain decisions have on the design outcome of a project. In relation to other designers it is crucial to make decisions cautiously too, not to imitate other designers unnecessarily and not to damage their and one’s personal work, reputation or career.

Although it is very important to acquire as much knowledge as possible and to train one’s eye through constant observation and analysis, to recognize refined distinctions and to know how and what to do differently from others, this will never be sufficient. Therefore, it is especially important to talk and discuss with as many people as possible throughout the design process to get feedback and to improve one’s work. Through the constant exchange with others, one can find their way to develop themselves and to distinguish oneself from other designers in an artistic, creative and stylistic way, without completely isolating oneself from their colleagues, contemporaries and the whole industry, because at the end of the day, Paradise is not a desert island.

---