There are two components to every creative idea: Usefulness and uniqueness. Both can be gray areas for people. What makes something useful is subjective. What’s useful to me isn’t necessarily useful to another person.

---

---

Artwork is a great example. While I recognize that abstract forms of art are highly valued by some people, I can’t actually see the value in it myself. To me, they seem like blotches of paint with no real purpose. But others see beauty in them. Neither of us are right or wrong. What’s useful can be subjective.

For some innovations, it’s easier to see this usefulness in action. When I send an email instead of a physical letter, I realize that it’s useful to me. Art work is an area where there’s tons of gray area because it’s usefulness is very subjective and its not easy to determine.

So what makes art useful? In most cases, how useful artwork is depends entirely on how meaningful it is to the person viewing it. This is true whether we’re talking about a visual painting, a piece of music, or industries like stand-up comedy. A painting might be meaningful because of the emotions it stirs up in you. Techno music is meaningful because it lets you act like a drunk ***hole. Stand-up comedy is meaningful because the jokes often imply deeper meaning. They are used to tear down people in power or make light of a human characteristic that we all share.

Each area of art has wildly different ways of arriving at meaning, but they all still share this same foundation. To be useful and important, art must have meaning behind it. That meaning changes not only for which industry your in, but it depends on each individual you’re creating for.

As you’re creating today, think about what usefulness and meaningfulness mean in your specific industry. Think about how other people might view or use your creative idea. Go deeper than surface level solutions to problems. Go deeper than creating artwork just because you think it looks or sounds good.

Whether you’re being creative in art, business, or science, whoever you’re creating for will ultimately have to decide on whether your idea is meaningful to them. This means we can start with the goal in mind. We don’t have to create new ideas and hope that others find them meaningful. Start with something meaningful and design the entire idea around that. With something meaningful at the core of your creative idea, you can then work backwards to create your art. Start with WHY you’re creating art in the first place, then figure out WHAT you actually want to create.