Or, who are you in the creative process?
We admit it. We love those silly creative quizzes BuzzFeed seems to release daily. They are a fun break in the middle of the day and you can find out what pasta you were in a past life by planning a trip to Italy (spaghetti cache e pepe: easy-going, dependable, and such a delight!).
Just as creative is Adobe’s visually stunning psychology-based Creative Types test or test. It combines well-known personality tests like Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, and other creative personality research from the past decades to distill eight creative types.
The intent with this test is to provide a fun and science-grounded way to identify your core creative personality and maybe even your potential as a creative. Per Adobe, “the test assesses your basic habits and tendencies—how you think, how you act, how you see the world—to help you better understand who you are as a creative.” Well, okay, sign us up!
Now, knowing your creative type may seem folly (like the pasta quiz) but let’s put a real-world perspective on it.
You, the designer
If you’re a designer, you’re asking potential clients to invest lots of money in you to develop their brand. Having insight into your creative personality and sensibilities could be just as important as showing your portfolio.
The latter is all about the end products; it provides little to no insight into the experience of crafting it. The former, however, is embedded in every step taken to arrive at that end product.
Your creative ‘type’ is what informs and molds your work experience and the client experience 100% of the time. You want the experience of the design process to be as enjoyable and memorable as the design destination for all involved parties. Or, at the very least, non-offensive.
You, the client
If you’re a potential client, your designer’s creative personality is embedded in every step taken to arrive at the final products. Their creative type(s) informs and molds your experience. Being able to draw lines between a designer’s portfolio and their creative type may assist you in making a decision on whether or not to partner with them.
By the same turn, your own creative personality is important too. You should know your own creative type, and tap into it when finding a design partner. It informs and molds your own client experience right along with the designer’s type.
Too much dissonance and the process and products could turn ugly. Too much harmony and the process and product may stagnant.
This is why we encourage everyone to take this quiz no matter the reason. There’s a little bit of every creative type within each of us. Even if you don’t think of yourself as ‘creative’. Having an awareness of what drives you creatively can only assist in assessments of our wants and needs.
On to the quiz
The creative team behind this test have constructed a work of art. Bet you didn’t know a test could be a work of art! An enormous amount of thought and activity went into each element. This is a test to savour, to experience as you move from question to question.
Equally important – savour your results. We are all multidimensional and therefore more than one type or thing. We evolve over time and so do our assessments of our selves. All of our learnings are reflected in everything we do, creative or not, consciously or not. So take your assessed type with a sensible mind and open heart. This is just one way to have a little fun and maybe (maybe?) you’ll find some life or career direction too.
Are you READY? Go to it – My Creative Types
Before we share our results, full disclosure – we took the test 4x. The first time was during a creative high and the second was during a creative lull. The other two times were during random moments. We wanted to see how our processes and mindsets shift based on circumstance and what that might mean in terms of a core creative personality distillation. Going for an ‘average’ approach worked for us; it may work for you too.
Our Creative Types
What we found was a bit surprising, a bit bang on, and a whole lotta amusing.
THE DREAMER
THE ARTIST
The world is a place of beauty and magic in the eyes of a DREAMER. Where others see facts and figures, you see symbols, metaphors, and hidden meanings.
You’re deeply emotional and intuitive, with a vivid imagination—the quintessential idealist and romantic. The inner world is always where you’ve felt most at home. You’re happy to roam your mental landscape of thoughts, emotions, and fantasies for hours on end.
You’re naturally drawn to express your inner world through literary pursuits, music, and the visual arts. Think of yourself as the “magical realist” of the creative types: like the literary masters of that genre, you naturally infuse your everyday life with the beauty and wonder of the imagination.
Your greatest gift is your depth of sensitivity and empathy, which allows you to give voice to universal human emotions in a way that touches people on a profound level. Your greatest challenge is learning to balance dreaming with disciplined action—which starts with coming back to the present moment.
Let your mind roam free, DREAMER, but don’t forget to return to the here and now. Practicing mindfulness will go a long way in helping you turn your dreams into reality.
Seek out opportunities to collaborate with INNOVATOR types, who combine your lofty idealism with a focus on pragmatic solutions. The grounding energy of the INNOVATOR can inspire you to apply your imagination to real-world change.
As an ARTIST, you need to create in order to feel truly alive. Full of ideas and visions, you’re driven by the desire to express yourself and transform the world around you.
The ARTIST type lives in the space between the inner and outer worlds, and your gift is the ability to powerfully manifest what’s inside of you. That’s not always an easy task, but with it comes the capacity to create works that speak to others on a deep level and inspire new ways of seeing the world.
With your love of beauty and your connection to the senses, you have a strong aesthetic orientation and you crave well-designed environments. Whatever creative field you end up pursuing, you tend to work best on your own and crave the independence that lets you freely follow your creative impulses. You’re at home in a state of flow—easily becoming so engrossed in whatever project you’re working on that you lose all sense of time and space.
Your biggest challenge is working through creative blocks stemming from your emotional nature. You know well that in the “war of art,” fear and self-doubt are your biggest enemies. Practice diplomacy instead of waging war, and you’ll learn to turn enemies into trusted allies pointing you in the direction of creative greatness; in other words, listening to your fear can tell you exactly what you need to do.
Together, the ARTIST and the PRODUCER form a powerful creative duo with the vision and drive to manifest ideas on a large scale. Seek out collaborations with the dynamic and pragmatic PRODUCER to amplify your impact and take your projects across the finish line.
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