As a result of these biases, he sees creative people as liberal and the lack of it as a conservative trait. Moreover, he proposes that pursuing your creativity is a very high-risk strategy in life, which he sees as the hallmark of a more liberal mindset. This brings us to the the trouble with narrow definitions.

The problem with this analysis is not that his conclusions are wrong, but that he seems to be basing them on a very narrow view of creativity. From the way he describes it, Peterson obviously thinks that creativity is uniquely found in artistic expression, and the the trouble with narrow definitions is that they lead to narrow conclusions.

For him, an architect would be creative whereas an engineer would not. A fine artist would be creative but not a draughtsman. He regards it as axiomatic that going to work every day is impossible for anyone of a creative bent. This is not my experience after thirty years of working in the creative industries.

In the early 90s I had the luck to work in the same office as the extraordinary graphic designer, Alan Fletcher. Fletcher understood creativity to be the ability to recognise connections that others simply do not see. However, he also recognised that making those links was a lot more commonplace than people realise. He once said to me that "everyone is a designer" and he was right.

Everyone includes you. Your home, your workspace, your clothes and your entire lifestyle require some degree of creative input. Irrespective of whether or not you flouting conventions, adhere to norms or subvert expectations, you are either choose means of self-expression or simply solve pragmatic issues in creative ways.

Peterson's idea of artistic creativity can also be misleading. An example would be an amateur painter, who is skilled with a brush. They spend their days faithfully reproducing landscapes. Despite appearances, there would be nothing remotely creative about such a person. Artistic yes, in a reductionist sense, but not creative.

So how does this link to the London Underground?

The Tube map – the map of the London Underground – is a creative solution that lies entirely outside of self-expression. Despite the fact that it displays a phenomenal grasp of visual acuity and technical skill, it is representational only as means of wayfinding. If you placed the tube map alongside a picture of hay wains rendered in oil on canvas, we know which one Jordan Peterson would pick as an example of creativity.

However, the Tube map perfectly represents the broader idea of creativity because it involves connections that are not immediately apparent. The map grew out of a need to render a complex system in simple, navigable terms. This is never an easy task and it would have proved to be impossible if not for a purely creative leap.

To understand this we have to examine the London Underground itself. Five separate companies built and operated the first tube lines. As a result, they did not get together to creates a composite map until the early years of the 20th century.

The map above was commissioned in 1907 by the five companies who were operating the various lines at that point. It should be noted that even though this early version of the Underground was only a fraction of the complex system that it would become, it was still an incredibly difficult task to represent it realistically against a physical map of London. It's a beautiful piece of work, both in design and execution, but it highlights the problems of rendering a complex system visually.

The real Tube map

In the late 1920s Harry Beck, a draughtsman working for the London Underground, made the conceptual leap away from a geographical map to a topographical one.

Whereas geography concerns itself with physical spaces as a whole, topography is more concerned with the individual features of such a space. Beck understood that passengers were not interested in the actual physical distance between stations, only how many stops they would travel and where they should change trains.

His real leap was when he adapted a completely different discipline to meet his needs. He began to lay out the underground system as though it were an electrical diagram. He represented each station as part of a system while ignoring its actual geographic position. Then he incorporated the existing colour coding of lines in order to allow passengers to plan their journeys more effectively. Finally he used his draughtsman skills to realise his ideas.

The Tube map seems obvious to us now. However, when Beck took the idea to his managers they rejected it on the basis that is was too radical. Despite this early setback, once tube travellers got their hands on some test prints there was no going back. Public approval of the map was universal.

From 1933, London Underground mass produced the Tube map for the London public and has done ever since. The map's designers have accommodated all of the extensions and additions to the Tube in the nine decades since it was first introduced. Another testament to it's effectiveness is that virtually every municipal railway project across the globe has adopted the tube map as a template for their own maps.

Why is this important

Creativity is a huge factor in human development. It manifests in writers expressing their innermost landscapes, in teachers communicating with students, with engineers developing systems to bring architects' visions to life, and even for medical professionals searching for solutions within a pandemic.

These are just a few scattered examples of how creativity is intrinsic to progress.

In the end, the trouble with narrow definitions is that we cannot afford to narrow creativity down to artistic self-expression. It won't do us any favours as and when we face the challenges to come.

Now that may sound patronising to grandmothers. However, in this instance she merely represents the everyman (or woman). Good signage should require no special or esoteric knowledge. You should be able to quickly navigate from any given point to any other point within the system at all times.

The art of wayfinding

Signage is just a method of aiding wayfinding, the process by which human beings orient themselves within - and navigate through - their environment.

We have evolved to be really good at this, so we tend not to think about it too much. The only time it enters our mind is when we get lost, or when we enter a novel, complex environment. This where signage becomes helpful, and in some cases crucial.

There are subtleties to signage that most of us never have to consider. Take motorway signs. They have the specific problem that they have to be read at 70 miles an hour. One of the cleverest ideas that British road sign designers made was to use lowercase letters for place names. This is because when we see a sign saying Bristol, we recognise the shapes of the letters rather than actually read the text. The brain then does the rest. This is much harder to do with capital letters because they form a visual rectangle as in BRISTOL.

Another part of the designer's art is to know when should use symbols rather than words. Some signs are better represented using images because of language barriers - toilets and rest rooms being the perfect example.

Beautiful versus functional

Signage is one of my favourite design disciplines because there is no real trade off between function and aesthetics. Your sign and directions can be useful and beautiful at the same time. The science museum with it primary colours, custom typeface, and integrated design is a great example of this.

But it's the efficiency of signage which makes the difference between success and failure. Nowhere is this more evident than hospitals.

Hospitals are different to most complexes. In a shopping mall or museum, bad signage might cause confusion and delay. In a hospital bad signage might potentially cost lives. The task is usually complicated by the fact that many hospitals were not designed with this in mind. They are often an amalgamation of buildings that grew around the original hospital. They might have been formerly used for other things and then repurposed as hospitals. Only the most modern hospital buildings are designed with the flow of people incorporated into their actual design.

The word "hospital" comes from the Latin hospes, meaning stranger or guest. The word hospitality comes from the same root. My last visit to a hospital involved visiting six different parts of the building and lasted nearly 24 hours. I didn't get lost once and I don't think I am particularly good at navigating spaces.

In the end it all comes down to balance.

The NHS designed their signage with all the right techniques. Colour coding; lowercase lettering; widely spaced lettering (easier to read at a distance); words reversed out of colour panels; desaturated background colours; judicious use of symbols and an excellent use of directional arrows.

The trick is to balance out all of these various elements to produce a coherent message to the patient.

So the next time you are wandering the halls of your local hospital, shopping centre or museum, give a thought to the unsung heroes who are guiding you on your way.