About the author
Roy Sharples is the Founder, President and Chief Creative Officer of Unknown Origins on a mission to unlock everyones creative potential.
Manifesto
Manifesto
MAKE THE THINGS ONLY YOU CAN
Before systems.
Before symmetry.
Before the world was carved into spreadsheets and strategy decks —
there was instinct.
Unshaped.
Unshamed.
Wearing only courage and the scent of rain on warm stone.
It didn’t ask.
It didn’t wait.
It didn’t sit in a conference room,
waiting for a bullet point to call its name.
It howled.
It made.
It mattered.
The first artist didn’t ask for feedback.
The first innovator wasn’t optimizing for scale.
The first storyteller didn’t track impressions.
They created because silence was suffocation.
Because being right was irrelevant if the work didn’t bleed.
This isn’t about aesthetics.
It’s about identity.
Carving something so raw, so radiant, so you into the fabric of time
that the world has no choice but to remember.
The defining question is a stalemate:
Should you be acceptable to others or to yourself?
One blends in.
The other breaks the sky.
One earns claps.
The other earns scars that turn to myth.
One becomes a tidy portfolio.
The other becomes a thunderclap in the story of the world.
You cannot serve both.
Pretending you can is how visionaries are embalmed in beige.
CREATIVITY IS NOT A KPI
Let’s not perform amnesia.
Let’s not confuse metrics for meaning.
Let’s not mistake virality for value.
Creativity is not a content stream.
It is not your LinkedIn strategy.
It is not your "brand essence."
Creativity is survival.
It’s your soul kicking against the walls when the world demands silence.
It is rebellion.
It is a lit ember refusing to die.
It is holy.
It is hazardous.
It is necessary.
It does not whisper.
It does not wait.
It erupts.
CODE FOR CREATIVE BRAVERY
1
Ridicule Is Just a Prequel
Your brightest ideas will arrive unwelcome.
Smile. Build anyway.
They'll copy you later — if they’re lucky.
2
Never Be Another Brick in the Beige Wall
Mediocrity is the world’s softest grave.
Escape it.
Be the off-note. The strange shape.
The reason someone feels something again.
3
Lead Without Frontiers
The future dances barefoot into chaos.
You don’t need consensus.
You need conviction.
Move first. Speak last.
4
Provoke Actions That Change Minds
Art that doesn’t move is decoration.
Shake people. Stir them.
If it doesn’t move a soul, tear it up and start again.
5
Keep True to the Dreams of Your Youth
Before the suits.
Before the slides.
Before the world traded wonder for workflows.
Return to that reckless grace.
Return to the rocket ships, the howling at the moon.
Protect that part of you like poetry in a burning library.
UNKNOWN ORIGINS:
THE ART OF THE UNACCEPTABLE
A Love Letter to the Unordinary
We don’t chase trends.
We are not echoes.
We are the first sound.
We move at the speed of instinct —
defining what’s next by refusing to follow.
We build brands that breathe.
Products that don’t blink.
Stories that scar.
This isn’t consultancy.
This is alchemy —
where art meets algorithm,
where imagination touches infrastructure,
where creativity beats like a heart.
We create because we must.
Because real ideas don’t whisper — they insist.
They haunt your sleep.
They demand the door be opened.
And once you let them in,
you are never the same.
We create because the world has grown numb —
and imagination is the only cure.
The future doesn’t arrive.
It is made.
Forged.
Invented — by those who begin.
We are not an agency.
We are not a vendor.
We are a movement.
A rebellion of dreamers, makers, and doers
who don’t wait for permission.
We forge tomorrow at the collision point of creativity and commerce.
If you’ve ever felt like a question mark in a world of exclamation points — good.
If you’ve been told to shrink, soften, silence — even better.
You weren’t made to fit.
You were made to make what only you can.
To leave behind something real —
something impossible without you.
This is not a brand manifesto.
It is a whispered revolution.
A neon prayer for the beautifully disobedient.
A signal flare for the misfits, the originals,
the ones who build from the inside out.
So go.
Make what’s never been made.
Shake the world awake.
And never, ever look back.
Signed, scorched —
Unknown Origins
ABOUT UNKNOWN ORIGINS
Unknown Origins is a Creative Studio and Storytelling Platform accelerating innovation for startups and enterprises. We craft brands that breathe, stories that scar, and products that refuse to blink first.
Make the things only you can. Create without frontiers.
Roy Sharples, CEO Unknown Origins
Works at the collision point of art and algorithm—where imagination ignites innovation, and strategy transforms into storytelling. As the founder of Unknown Origins and author of Creativity Without Frontiers, he helps makers, misfits, and markets reimagine what’s possible—then bring it unapologetically to life.