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Creative Standards

By Peter Lloyd

The idea of setting standards for creative people and the work they do sounds something like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Creativity is all about breaking rules, escaping boundaries, challenging tradition, and defying standards. And what kind of work isn’t creative? So is there any excuse for creative standards of any kind?

I remember my grandparents’ kitchen sink. Conventional in every other way, it remains a memory because the cold and hot water taps were reversed—cold on the left, hot on the right. I never learned why they were arranged that way. I’ll guess now that it was a matter of necessity, convenience, or laziness on the part of a plumber.

But could it have been a creative disregard for standards? The Uniform Plumbing Code has determined that faucets “shall be connected to the water distribution system so that hot water corresponds to the left side of the fittings.”

I’m not sure when my grandparents’ house was built, but the code came into use around the end of the 1920s. And before the code set uniform standards for the installation and maintenance of plumbing systems, local jurisdictions set their own standards, which naturally varied, sometimes substantially.

It’s possible the hot-cold position standard had not been established when my grandparents’ house was plumbed. So I can’t call the faucet reversal creative or error. And it doesn’t answer the question, is there any excuse for creative standards of any kind?

Yes. Faucet position, for example, saves users the trouble of having to read faucet handles every time they approach a sink, shower, or bathtub. It also prevents accidental scalding. But only because users expect hot on the left, cold on the right. Standards matter and many make sense.

Even the free-wheeling, improvisational worlds of jazz and blues follow standards. In form and practice. Compositions and performances that stand above the rest eventually earn the honorary title of standard.

Certain everyday tools, conveniences, and practices have evolved to the apex of their creative potential. Like the shoelace knot. I think I’ve changed the way I tie my shoes once in my life since my mother taught me the standard process. When I learned that a square knot would hold better, I made sure my shoelace knots were square.

Creative inventors and artists should follow standards unless they can improve upon them.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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