How Creative People In History Have Inspired Each Other [Chart]

It would be an understatement for me to say that I’m surrounded by creative people. It would be more accurate to say I’ve been surrounded by creative people my whole life. My family is creative, I went to a school that focused on creativity, my Twitter stream oozes with creativity, and the people I work with every day are creative. If you’ve lived the same life, you know the ideas that spawn in that environment are often times a collaboration, even if it’s not obvious.

In other words, creative people inspire each other. It’s not unusual at all for someone to come up with an idea, which someone else follows through, and yet someone else transforms it into something else, and that thing becomes a household name. It happens all the time. It’s like there are all these ideas floating around in the air, and you can just reach up and grab whichever one you like and make a go of it.

Here is another way to describe it… a couple years ago, I saw a tweet in my stream that had a perspective in it which has always stayed with me. It was someone who tweeted that every blog post is inspired by another blog post that’s already on the Internet. Think about that, and it will twist your brain. So, where does it all start? That is what I want to know.

It’s been like this for many years, and creative people have been inspiring each other throughout history. This illustration below shows the symbiotic relationships amongst creativity throughout the years. It’s called Circles Of Influence, and it’s by Michelle Legro and Maria Popova. It was illustrated by Wendy Macnaughton. According to Etsy, it was created “as part of Longshot magazine’s Debt issue. ‘Circles of Influence’ is a chart of artistic, scientific and philosophical debts through time.” I hope you like this as much as I did.