I had brought home a drawing of people that were coloured in with crayon in a rich blue-violet. My Mom asked me, innocently enough, why my people were purple. It's only obvious in hindsight that the question was not rhetorical. Like other grown-ups, she really didn't know why the child had used purple. The fact that the child was her son would only fuel her need to know.
Of course, my response was all out of proportion. Since there was no such thing as purple people, I thought she was merely pointing out my obvious error. I began to describe my world with only the precise and factual methods of science, suppressing my creative skills for 20 years.
Then, I discovered industrial design and learned that people did it for a living. Not only did I want to join their ranks, but found that I had been unwittingly practicing it all my life.
I had always created things. Thought them up, then made them. Things like rubber band rifles and "improving" my cheap plastic stereo with even cheaper car stereo speakers. I made Tonka-sized hovercraft and put working steering wheels on my Lego models.
And so I christen my creativity as Purple People Design. Not because of some 60's pop song or because it has a nice ring to it, but because my earliest memory as a designer was to make purple people, and, after many years of exile, my purple people had finally come home.
:)ensen
Vancouver