education IS still important, bcoz it forms the building blocks of creativity. the more things u know, the more powerful ur output of creativity will be.

u cant simply design a chair without understanding the characteristics of sitting - anthropometry, psychology, structure, material properties and so on. to understand that, u need to a firm grasp on human behaviour and basic physics. and to know that, u need to be able to read and understand.

without education, u will be severely limited to "trial and error", a tedious and exhaustive method of using brute force to solve a simple problem.