Is a Creative by Any Other Name Just as Talented?

This post is from Workgroups DaVinci, an Adobe MAX 2017 partner. We’d like to thank all our MAX partners who help make the conference possible.

Language is elastic, always expanding to encompass new ideas and phrases that emerge from the cultural zeitgeist–words like selfie, ghosting, photobomb and binge-watch are all fairly fresh additions to our collective lexicon. As we add new words, we also change how we use existing ones. Creative is one such word. Historically an adjective, its usage as a noun to describe a particular type of job (as in I’m part of a team of ten creatives) has been growing in recent years and not everyone is pleased with this evolution.

As the makers of workflow management software for creative and marketing teams, we decided to survey designers, illustrators, writers, developers and executives on how they feel about creative as a noun. Is it a useful catch-all like educator (which can apply to anyone from a kindergarten teacher to a tenured professor) or just one more piece of eyeroll-worthy business jargon that we can live without?

The results, presented in the infographic below, might surprise you.

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