Why Man Creates

Why Man Creates is a 1968 animated short documentary film that discusses the nature of creativity. It was directed by Saul Bass, who co-wrote it with Mayo Simon. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject. An abbreviated version of it ran on the first broadcast of CBS' 60 Minutes on September 24, 1968.

Why Man Creates focuses on the creative process and the different approaches taken to that process. It is divided into eight sections: The Edifice, Fooling Around, The Process, Judgment, A Parable, Digression, The Search, and The Mark.

In 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Saul Bass started thinking about creativity in the mid-1950s when he participated in a New York Art Directors Club "Visual Communications Conference on Creativity (1958). In 1966 he was hired by the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Company to produce what was essentially a recruiting film for scientists and engineers from the East Coast, which then financed Why Man Creates with a budget of $200,000, which eventually exceeded $400,000.