Lemmings, according to britannica.com, these small creatures with wild reputations, do not commit suicide, but provide an “irresistible metaphor for human behavior”.
Someone who blindly follows a crowd, to their detriment or eventual downfall.
brittanica.com proclaims that “…the myth has been invoked to express modern anxieties about how individuality could be submerged and destroyed by mass phenomena, such as political movements or consumer culture…”
mmmm… now on the other hand:
A maverick is someone who thinks and acts in an independent way, behaving differently from the expected.
When it comes to the creative industries, mavericks are found everywhere, and we all have our favourites: those who have inspired us, made us think and see things differently; some dismissed as ‘wild eccentrics’; others holding their ideas up like a shining beacon?
One of my favourite mavericks is Jimi Hendrix. A black, left-handed-guitar-playing-upside-down, downright six-string genius. Now he tore up rule books for fun.
I often wonder, what would he have been like if he was a designer in today’s templated design culture.
How would he have ever fitted in?
Definitely, no lemming
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
It was he who asked others to jump, and they all asked ’how high?’, to which Jimi replied, “excuse me while I kiss the sky”
He is recognised as one of the greatest creative forces unleashed and universally accepted for his independent-mindedness...
