#02 Theory of Ingenuity (Version 1.0)
Everyone can do anything, but no one can do anything well without experience.
Reading Mondrian's manifesto is almost the only way to truly understand his art. For those who have never looked into it, his paintings are simply lines and squares. But once you have read his ideas, those same compositions become a continuous search for balance: the balance of life, of society, of the collective itself. Throughout his entire career, Mondrian painted seemingly similar variations of the same theme, pursuing an almost obsessive investigation that lasted for years.
I believe this is the best example of what I mean by ingenuity. Not the pursuit of creating something radically new at any cost, but the ability to work within a territory you know deeply, expanding it until it becomes an extension of yourself. A continuous search. An ever-expanding universe.
The starting point is the collection of our own experiences, allowing us to develop and make the most of everything we have learned over the years. Everything you have gathered throughout your life: the experiences you have lived, the materials you have worked with, the ways you have learned, your patterns of thinking, your relationships with other people. Even your emotions contribute to the growth of your creative journey. Very often, they become its supporting pillars.
Ingenuity is not about creating something entirely new. Quite the opposite. It is about developing and expanding what we already possess, transforming it into a language that becomes increasingly personal.
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Today, speed is absorbing every aspect of everyday life. We find ourselves rushing even when no one is chasing us. The message we constantly receive—when we turn on the television, open social media, or read an article—is always the same: "You have to create something completely new to achieve an innovative result, and you're already behind." Relying on our own experience and allowing ourselves to grow gradually often feels like an outdated approach, something that must be broken. Swept away by a new piece of software, a new device, or the latest artificial intelligence.
Don't mistake this for a manifesto against progress. Every new invention becomes part of our daily lives before we've even had time to fully absorb it. It only becomes truly useful once we understand how to use it—not simply what it is capable of.
One important distinction: the words ingenuity and creativity are often treated as though they belonged in the same category. To me, they are two separate processes. I could say that creativity is the artistic branch of ingenuity, although the word creativity has been used so excessively that it has become difficult to grasp in any concrete sense.
So if ingenuity is born from reorganizing our own experience, then it is worth pausing for a moment to understand how we can truly embrace that experience.
Building on What We Already Have
When we embark on a new journey, we unconsciously compare every new experience with something that already feels familiar. The knowledge we have accumulated exists on parallel tracks, always ready to connect with whatever we are learning next. Ingenuity develops through our ability to bend those tracks until they meet, allowing different experiences to intersect and enrich one another. This kind of connection is always present in everyday life, even if it often goes unnoticed. Just look at the relationship between the physical and the digital worlds. Many people still see them as two separate ecosystems, yet they constantly shape one another, changing the way we perceive and experience reality.
For that reason, when we decide to develop a project, we do not have to reinvent ourselves from scratch every time. If we approach a new discipline pretending that our personality, our way of thinking, and our past experiences have no influence on the final outcome, we are bound to lose interest before long.
This is not a message for the very young, who are taking their first steps and discovering paths they have never explored before. It is meant for those who are building something but stumble, fall, give up for a while, and then find the strength to start again. Today, many people speak openly about feeling exhausted by working life, dreaming of leaving everything behind to do... who knows what. Perhaps someone will find inspiration in these words simply by considering a perspective that often seems almost too simple.
So let's ask ourselves a question.
If I woke up tomorrow without a job, and my life depended entirely on myself...
What can I actually do?
Will I chase a passion that seems exciting and rewarding simply because people tell me that's where the big money is, even if I have no real foundation? Or will I choose to build on the abilities I genuinely possess?
Imagine writing your résumé for the very first time—but instead of sending it to an employer, you are handing it to yourself. There is no one to impress. There's no need to make yourself look younger with an old photograph. You don't need to list design thinking or problem-solving as buzzwords. You don't need to pad it with internships from your first year at university just to fill the page. If those experiences helped shape who you are today, you already know it.
Now place all your skills and interests on the table. Ask yourself which of them are truly indispensable. Which ones would you want to explore not just for a day, but as ideas worth pursuing for years. Is that intimidating? Absolutely.
Pay attention even to the most seemingly useless or abstract things, and begin filling the backpack you are about to carry on your shoulders. If you already have a project underway, this doesn't mean throwing away everything you've built. Instead, let it become an opportunity to ask whether you left an important tool behind—something that could have made the journey easier. As we focus on the abilities we have already developed, our shortcomings begin to reveal themselves as well. Those become the next territories worth exploring. Perhaps we need a deeper understanding of a particular material, or of colour theory—subjects we once took for granted. Look carefully at what you already carry with you. That is where it makes sense to begin building.
When a designer or another creative professional develops a product, they often rely on a structured method, such as Bruno Munari's design process. What do they do? They identify a need, reason through possible solutions, eliminate the unnecessary, study the appropriate materials, and create an object that is both functional and complete, often consulting specialists along the way.
But what if we tried doing the opposite?
What if we set out to build a language that nobody had asked for? A project that doesn't solve an immediate problem.
If we have truly given ourselves time to reflect, the knowledge and interests that have been quietly maturing within us will eventually surface. Not necessarily as a final destination, but as a personal language that continues to expand—one capable of revealing connections, pathways, and possibilities that previously went unnoticed. The more we weave these elements together, the less we think in isolated compartments. We begin to perceive the whole rather than only its individual parts. We develop what I call Three-Dimensional Vision.
A blank sheet of paper is never truly blank, because we have already filled it.
We begin to gain a genuine awareness of what we want to create, no longer forced to start over, undo, and rebuild every time. We learn where we can push and where something will give way. From that moment on, we begin to take control—of the drawing, of the material, of the process itself. We reach the point where a paintbrush no longer feels like a tool, but like another finger. We move forward with the confidence that whatever problem arises, we will be able to solve it, adding one small improvement at a time to our work. We may run out of ideas now and then, but we possess the practical ability to shape them when they arrive.
As it stands, this still sounds rather abstract.
So let's make it tangible.
An illustrator wants to create a scene featuring a horse. Throughout their career, they have never been commissioned to draw one. So, in order to learn how to draw a realistic horse, they spend fifteen days copying the same animal in exactly the same pose. Through repetition, both mind and hand gradually absorb its form. For another fifteen days, they continue drawing that same horse, but in different poses. After a month, they attempt to draw it from imagination, without any reference image, and realize that they now truly know how to draw a horse.
Only then can they begin to illustrate it—experimenting with different styles, combining traditional and digital techniques, and exploring new technologies.
There is one important caveat. If the entire process is delegated to a digital tool, they will never develop a genuine understanding of the horse itself. They will not have gained anything to enrich their own toolbox of knowledge, nor will they be able, one day, to rely on the real skill they need. They will have missed the very ingenuity that allows them to assemble what they already know and apply it to the composition of their work.
It may sound harsh, but it is a reality. The illustration they want to create cannot even take shape because they never gained full control of the tool. And if that tool suddenly disappears, they are unable to move forward.
I'm not talking about losing a pencil. I'm talking about losing every tool, every colour, and the canvas itself. A mature artist would still find another way, reconnecting with everything they have learned in order to improvise a substitute and complete the work.
The point is not the horse, the drawing, or the technique being used. Everyone develops this process differently, building a framework that is uniquely their own. The real objective is to construct a supporting structure that integrates everything we have experienced throughout our lives, making it possible to activate our ingenuity.
Personally, I experience it as an enormous detective-style mind map, overflowing with sketches, notes, and images. The kind where you can never find anything, with coloured strings connecting pushpins in every direction. Yet within that apparent chaos, I feel completely at home. I look at an object and can immediately imagine it the way Picasso might have painted it—all of its angles existing simultaneously on the same canvas.
I imagine that people who work in research or academic study experience it differently. For them, it may feel more like a vast mental archive: a collection of neatly organised drawers filled with images, ideas, and texts, ready to be opened whenever they are needed.
Using Ingenuity Effectively
The importance of experience as the driving force behind ingenuity becomes most apparent in technical or highly specialized professions—far removed from the world of creative pursuits or artistic craftsmanship.
A while ago, my partner and I went to a specialist running store to buy a new pair of running shoes. She is entirely self-taught. She started running on her own and, over time, naturally developed her own running style. She asked for a pair of shoes designed for overpronation. The owner, a former marathon runner with more than forty years of experience, watched her walk for only a few moments before realizing that something didn't add up. He suggested carrying out a gait analysis.
In his opinion, she had simply been recommended the wrong type of shoe. He made a slight adjustment to her posture, and the difference was immediate. Just by observing the way she walked, he had already identified the problem. He then told us how his profession had evolved over the years, describing the manual modifications he used to make to running shoes before manufacturers began producing models tailored to every specific need, and how technology had gradually reduced the grey areas that once relied entirely on personal expertise.
In that moment, experience, passion, and profession had all converged into a single language. I think everyone has experienced something similar: reaching the point where you begin to perceive meanings hidden between the lines—things that remain invisible to anyone who has not lived through the same accumulation of experience.
If I continue analysing my own artistic journey, however—a path that began almost out of necessity—I find a very different story. Different ideas collided, fought each other, and only after a long struggle did they finally reach some form of agreement.
Conclusion
This theory was originally developed for my own use. I shaped it gradually, as it evolved alongside my project and revealed new aspects of it. I don't see it as an absolute truth. I see it more as a rough draft—much like the sketches that accompany these articles. A framework meant to be revised, expanded, and reassembled over time.
Today, I would summarize it like this:
Ingenuity is the ability to adapt by making use of what we already possess, transforming it into a new language.
Writing it down has made me realize that I instinctively approach problems by overturning preconceptions and questioning structures imposed by others—closed systems that have never truly belonged to me. It is simply another way of looking at realities that are, in fact, quite simple, yet are often explained as though they were impossibly complicated.
People often tell me:
"You always make things sound too easy."
No.
Not always.
Years of apprenticeship. Personal struggles. Days when motivation disappears. Passions abandoned. Painful experiences. Anger. Envy. Moments of depression interrupted by brief flashes of happiness. Books read, manuals worn out, outdated ideas, new technologies that intimidate you simply because you don't know how to use them yet. The joy of creating something new. Realizing, six months later, what you had been doing wrong all along. Earning a single new follower because of one honest comment.
We learn through our mistakes.
And when we do, the next difficulties become a little easier to face.
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