How about narcissist? Is that a dirty word? There are 4 paragraphs spent on needlessly reflecting on a shitty childhood like they're laying in a therapist's chair. "I" is repeated 30 times, literally. Perhaps there are greater issues than the perception of the word creative.

...or maybe I'm out of the loop, or I occupy a different culture. In my little bubble of a world, designers often call themselves "creatives" the same as programmers call themselves developers. From my perspective, the author has to sell me on how "creative" has been deemed dirty.

Is it this following section?

business folk still look askance at designers, still too often see us as gushing decorators, to be brought in after the real work is done and make things pretty so consumers will swallow.

First, there is nothing wrong with a decorator. They're important. Second, there is a lot of work to do before design work even starts, and very little of it should be left up to the whims of creative feelings. That's how projects fail. Third, it is the designers job to make things pretty; that is, in fact, the role of a "creative". There is nothing wrong or dirty about that. It takes talent to do that. If they're somehow offended by this, perhaps it's time to obtain other skills so they can have other roles.

After this, the article dives into an awkwardly long and personal reflection of childhood insecurity. I'm still not seeing usable insight.

Is this yet another rant from a designer who thought they'd have complete control of a their projects? Angry that numerous other objectives exist, and they're unable to contend with requirements from "science-y" (as the author puts it) people who dare encroach on their superior aesthetic judgement? Without a better setup than this, it sounds like yet another dribbble reality bubble has been burst.

Great creatives design around challenges, they design inside of requirements specified with vague information and they do it on wickedly short deadlines. "Make this look good" is what they do. Somehow, I don't think it's the "creative" part of the profession which is causing the "askance" from business owners, but the tendency to resort to strange insecurities every time an objective interferes with how it should look according to the designer.

I don’t call myself creative. That’s pretentious.

Who the hell has the problem with the word creative here? Did I just read a blog arguing with itself?

But research and logic and testing and iteration and process and whiteboards and meetings and briefs never created a memorable campaign, never crafted a logo, never reinvented how designers approach their craft.

So... they're unaware of how many creatives work, apparently. I have to be blunt, that is quite possibly one of the most asinine things I've read.

I hate to be so harsh with this article, but it fails to deliver noteworthy points, and fails to create anything useful at the end of the rant. Maybe I'm missing something; that has happened before.