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Unread 01-15-2018, 06:09 AM
Matt Q Matt Q is offline
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Join Date: May 2013
Location: England, UK
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Ann,

I think you've come to the right place to find people with conservative views on language, and perhaps if you asked elsewhere you'd get different responses.

But with that caveat, yes, I don't like it either, and I agree with David that it seems to imply that others are not. "artists" seems accurate and unproblematic. And "creatives" seems to strike me defining people solely in terms of their creativity (imagination and ideas - a Romantic notion almost) rather than also their craft, skill or discipline -- whereas "artist" seems to capture all of these.

Had a quick Google. The word seems to be business jargon. The OED gives, "informal: A person whose job involves creative work." The example they give is ‘the most important people in the mix will be creatives and direct marketing specialists’. And Cambridge gives, "a person whose job involves producing original ideas or doing artistic work" with the example, "Several leading creatives are involved in the advertising campaign". And MacMillan gives, "someone whose job is to have new ideas, especially in advertising". So that's another good reason not to use it.

Matt

Last edited by Matt Q; 01-15-2018 at 06:13 AM.
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