Hiroshi Fujiwara is an all-around artist. A musician, a producer and designer heralded for bringing Hip-Hop to Japan in the 80s, he has trouble describing what he does to questioning strangers.
As Fujiwara dips into multiple genres, he uses creativity as his life force. Moving across these boundaries, he is able to maintain a lifestyle where his ideas are not compartmentalized and segregated into different boxes. In the video below, he speaks of his experience as a young 18-year-old straight from Japan getting respect for his ideas from people twice or thrice his age. It makes sense because creativity is blind.
Hiroshi Fujiwara: Two Things from NIKELAB on Vimeo.
When we are creating something, we often impose our own types of limits on the project. Why? Maybe it's social conditioning. Maybe it's “being safe.” Whatever it is, letting ourselves be a bit more open with our own creative projects can yield some impressive results.
Results Fujiwara is not unfamiliar with. After his friend, Eric Clapton, had a performance in Japan in 2003, Fujiwara designed a guitar for him. A design he meant for only a select few became 500 units. It seems, that when we let our creative juices flow, we soar.
Forget about defining what it is you do, and just do. You’ll probably end up surprising yourself.