Being creative as a "non-creative" 🎨

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We're back from holiday! I want to share one interesting reflection I've had throughout our travels - and that's on the definition of "creativity", and what makes a person a "creative".

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Even though we currently make videos on YouTube, i.e. pursuing a very creative outlet, I had always considered myself to be a "non-creative".

This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the arts - growing up, I was always interested in music (fun fact: in middle school, I tried playing over 10 instruments before settling on the trumpet as my main instrument!).

But to me, and perhaps to many others, when I hear the word "artist" or "creative", the image that comes to mind is one of a painter, or a designer, or even a fashion designer. In other words, what comes to mind is someone who excels at the visual arts.

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I grew up with little interest in the visual arts, and often found myself in the position where the only grade preventing me from getting straight As in school was art class. This might sound like a flex, but honestly it was a little bit traumatic for me as a kid needing to explain to my Chinese parents that I got a single B because I couldn't draw for shit.

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Since becoming a content creator, and taking "creativity" seriously, I've learned a couple of things that have changed the way I view myself, and creatives generally.

First off, my definition of "creativity" has changed dramatically. I think of it as taking knowledge, experiences, insights, and observations and using all of those things to approach a scenario with a fresh perspective. When we first started making YouTube videos, we had our creative muses - channels which we enjoyed watching, and which we tried to emulate and learn from. But over time, as we developed the ability to film and edit, we found our own style which still incorporated things we learned from other channels, but also incorporated elements from film and music. It's the collection of broad experiences which has enabled us to create something new.

Secondly, I believe that "creativity" is truly something which far transcends only the visual arts, and can be found in almost every aspect of life. Here's a simple example: Uber, now a household name, was a creative concept which merged traditional taxis with the idea of democratizing services that were traditionally provided by large organizations only (this was popularized by other companies at the time like Airbnb). Truly, anyone can be a creative - all that matters is the experience that person has gained in the course of their life.

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Of course, individuals will all have their tendencies towards certain things they're fascinated by or interested in. In my case, this means I pay far more attention to music, and specifically music in film and YouTube editing, than I do to anything visual. With that said, knowing that creativity is something which can be learned, and which isn't fixed at birth, has been a mind-opening reflection for me which has helped me realize that I can learn to be more visual as well, while simultaneously naturally tending towards more of the aural.

Something Cool - Magic the Diluted 🃏

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The market for collectible trading cards is pretty insane. The rarest Pokémon card in existence, a PSA 10 gem mint condition Pikachu Illustrator, was bought by Logan Paul in 2021 for over US$5m.

Pokémon cards, though, are usually collected more for their collectible value, and not because collectors want to use them to play the actual game. By contrast, cards from another popular collectible card game, Magic The Gathering ("MTG"), are accumulated by collectors both for their collectible value as well as their value in the actual game.

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Interestingly, the creators of MTG, Wizards of the Coast ("WotC"), didn't seem to understand this about their collectors.

WotC routinely reprints old cards with a white border, instead of a classic black border that all "new" MTG cards have. This is to signify that white border versions are reprints, and therefore are not as rare as their black border counterparts.

However, the price of black border cards would tank as certain reprints were released, because collectors had valued cards based on the rarity of their function and what they did in the game, as opposed to simply how rare they were as a collectible.

To address this, WotC ended up creating a "Reserved List", which contains cards to never be reprinted as functional copies, in order to not dilute and devalue rare cards held by players and collectors alike. The Reserve List is updated periodically over time.

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If you're interested in watching a vlog detailing the US$5m Pikachu Illustrator card sale, check out this video which was uploaded onto Logan Paul's main channel.

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