The novelty myth as a normative model of creativity: a critical study of design practice

Abstract

This article examines how creativity is understood within contemporary graphic design practice, arguing that it is increasingly reduced to the continuous production of novelty. While creativity research generally treats novelty alone as insufficient to constitute creativity (Amabile, 1996; Boden, 2004; Runco & Jaeger, 2012), contemporary design environments often equate creativity with visible differentiation and constant renewal. Drawing on sociological and systems-based approaches to creativity, Barthes’ concept of myth and Reckwitz’s creativity dispositif, the article introduces the novelty myth to describe how “the new” operates as a normative expectation. Through practice-based artistic inquiry, combining autoethnographic reflection with parafictional design experiments developed within Unagency, the study examines how procedural forms of novelty become visible when familiar operations of design practice are isolated and exaggerated. It contributes to critical creativity studies by bringing sociological theories of creativity into dialogue with situated artistic inquiry, using graphic design practice as a diagnostic site for examining continuous novelty.