Why insisting on total originality can destroy your creativity
When I first moved to Paris in my early 20s to study visual design, I was obsessed with being “noble.” I didn’t want to copy anyone. I wanted to be 100% original. I believed that was the only way to prove I was truly talented and earn a reputation as a “devil designer”—the kind of creator people feared and respected.
But I learned the hard way:
Being totally original is often a nightmare.
If a design has no references, no existing framework—it usually ends up weird, confusing, or just plain bad. Real creativity builds on the past. The most powerful designs carry fragments of past brilliance, then remix them into something new.
I wasted years rejecting influence, thinking even having an idea “inspired by” something was plagiarism. At one point, I even sarcastically copied classmates’ ideas just to protest how derivative they were. But ironically, their work succeeded—not because it was copied, but because it evolved from something already proven to work.
Why fight history, when you could stand on the shoulders of giants and see farther?
Design ≠ Fashion (at least not everywhere)
I went to a kind of apprenticeship-based design school where we didn’t study art or design history in depth. I dismissed those old theories as outdated and boring.
Like many students, I learned by observing the market—walking through Paris department stores and window displays. In Paris, design and fashion blur together, so I thought that was universal.
But once I left Paris, I realized:
Design is not the same as fashion.
Paris is unique in that overlap. In other countries, design follows different logics—and that forced me to rethink everything.
Trapped Between Plagiarism and Isolation
Design students often fall into two traps:
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Repeating the same tired concepts (copying others without depth), or
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Trying to invent from scratch and ending up disconnected, incoherent.
Later, I talked with friends studying in fine arts academies. Their curriculum was more theoretical and structured—and surprisingly useful. Even commercial designers can benefit from having a system to balance originality with audience understanding.
Conclusion
Originality doesn’t mean creating something from thin air.
Design isn’t a heroic solo act—it’s a conversation with the past, the market, and the world around you.
We don’t “invent” ideas. We evolve them.
True design speaks when it evolves from what came before.
