garygilliland:

In today’s Guardian George Monbiot has written about the problems he envisages with the government’s plans to introduce a feed-in tariff for domestic renewable energy sources. The facts and politics of the piece are the subject for discussion elsewhere but the piece that intrigued me was his comment on how criminals would take advantage of the system.

“it can’t be long before thousands of petty criminals discover the perfect carousel fraud, bypassing their solar panels by connecting the incoming wire to the outgoing wire. By buying electricity for 7p and selling it for 44p (if you sell power to the grid rather than using it yourself, you get an extra 3p), they’ll make a 600% profit. Amazingly the government has decided not to measure how much electricity people are selling, but "to pay export tariffs on the basis of estimated (deemed) exports". Elsewhere in its report it boasts of "encouraging a risk-based approach to audit and assurance"”

This is still in the realms of theory but nonetheless it’s a brilliant example of criminal creativity.

via http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff

There’s great power in what smart people call stupid.

Stupid people ask questions. Stupid people break the rules. Stupid people are dreamers. Stupid people try things. Stupid people believe they can change world.

The Be Stupid campaign by Diesel captures it perfectly.

Bruce DeBoer from Permission To Suck has post the results of a new word game. Change, add or subtract one letter from a word and come up with a new definition.

Examples like Osteopornosis (n.): A degenerate disease and Dopeler effect (n.): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly, make for a light hearted distraction from work.

On a more important note games and exercises like this make for a great way to flex your creative muscles once in a while.

Fun Word Play | Permission To Suck

I’ve always been captivated by the sea and images of it are a source of constant joy. So I was delighted to discover the exhibition The Sea: LS Lowry & Maggi Hambling at the The Lowry.

As someone who only knows Lowry as a painter of “matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs” I was amazed by his peopleless seascapes. I was equally taken with the work of his 21st century successor Maggi Hambling, painter and creator of the controversial Scallop in Suffolk.

In this BBC slideshow you can see their work and hear Hambling talk about her work.

In this interview, Maggi talks about her processes for painting the sea, and the effect of Lowry’s work on her.

LS Lowry & Maggi Hambling: The Sea from Rob Martin on Vimeo.

I’ve mentioned Daniel Eatock’s creative manifesto before. His presentation at AIGA gives you the opportunity to see the man himself talk about his work and see how his manifesto plays out in his work.

Daniel Eatock — AIGA | the professional association for design

I’ve written about ideas like this before but just because it’s a repeat doesn’t make the idea any less important.

In the December 2009 issue of Wired, Ideo talk about how they would manage the problem of urban rage and in particular the stresses caused by queuing. The idea is simple, convert the queue from an object of stress into something positive.

Members of the public can register for a card which allows them to log the time spent queuing at participating locations. The time accrued on the card can then be converted into time which the member organisations then ‘donate’ to nominated charities.

The whole article is worth reading both for a fuller explanation of the queuing idea and also for an overview of the thinking processes within Ideo itself

Wired: Reinventing British manners the Post-It way

CNN have published the results of a study by Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University into the secrets of innovation. According to the study the five keys are Associating, Questioning, Observing, Experimenting and Networking.

These are certainly critical skills but the key skill they left out was Selling. While networking sort of covers selling, the definition used “innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives” doesn’t hit the mark.

Good ideas die everyday not because they are worthless but because no one is willing to buy into them. Successful innovators need to know how to connect with an audience and sell them an idea. Steve Jobs isn’t necessarily the most creative or innovative person but as a salesman he has few equals and that’s why he’s successful. 

Learn the five secrets of innovation – CNN.com

In my last post I listed some bit ’n’ pieces from The Art of Looking Sideways but I thought this one was important so I’ve lifted it out separately. In the book Fletcher points out some attributes of creativity.

• challenging assumptions
• being receptive to new ideas
• recognising similarities or differences
• making unlikely connections
• taking risks
• building on ideas to make better ideas
• looking at things in new ways
• taking advantage of the unexpected
• taking chances

As a checklist for developing your creativity pretty much covers all the bases.

Alan Fletcher was graphic designer who described himself as a visual jackdaw but in his book The Art of Looking Sideways he proved that he was no jackdaw but a very discerning observer and collector.

The book is a collection of facts, thoughts, quotes and images which cover almost every subject imaginable. This might sound vague but when the table of contents covers the areas below it seems reasonable to say everything.

culture; tools; creativity; wit; improvisation; colour; dreaming; ideas; synchronicity; mutation; learning; noise; paradigms; automaton; intelligence; brain; mind; senses; thinking; problems; chance; imagination; visualizing; alphabet; seeing; places; perception; stereotypes; value; illusion; paradox; figure ground; symmetry; reflections; pattern; camouflage; economy; proportion; composition; leys & lines; aesthetics; taste; style; perfection; meanings; symbols; numbers; typography; skill; perspective; space-time; figuring; language; rhetoric; design; process; copying; words; imaging; picture play; wordplay; handedness; pictograms; scripts; letters; identity; names; signatures; insignia; trademarks; writing;

At about 500 pages it’s physically impressive and the care that has been taken with its design is a reflection on the quality of Fletcher’s other work. Without inspiring content this would be meaningless but in this case the content is better than the presentation.

To describe it as the best bathroom book I’ve read sounds like an insult but this isn’t a book to read in long sessions but one that’s best enjoyed in small bursts so that you have time to absorb and consider what you’ve read. Ignore the pretentious language and comments about designers in the Amazon reviews, it’s a book for anyone who wants to be inspired. Over time it will become a source of enjoyment and creativity which you will turn to time and time again.

Below are just a few snippets of the literally dozens of fascinating items in the book.

"the unlike is joined together and from differences results the most beautiful harmony" Heraclitus

"…apparently unrelated things become interesting when you start fitting them together…" John Kowenhoven Mathematician

Imagination is the active ingredient of thinking. Imagination jumps from present facts to future possibilities. Imagination forms the mental pictures of things not present. Imagination conceives of situations not yet in existence. Imagination conjures up correspondences and analogies

"what is now proved was once only imagined" William Blake

"simple is better than complicated. quiet is better than noisy. what is close at hand is better than what has to be sought" Dieter Rams

A Wombat is not only an Australian marsupial but also an acronym for Waste Of Money, Brains and Time

"There is nothing more difficult to take in, more perilous to conduct, more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things because the innovator will have for enemies all who have done well under the old conditions and luke warm defenders who do well under the new" Machiavelli

Eero Saarinen got the idea for the design of the Kennedy TWA Terminal when after eating grapefruit for breakfast he turned the grapefruit over and squeezed it with one hand to form the indentations.

" you have to give a letter of the alphabet the dignity it deserves. this becomes clear when you don’t know the language. think of Arabic or Chinese. It is beautiful by itself, an art apart." Franco Maria Ricci

There 37 letters in the alphabet. 26 lower case and 11 capitals that don’t resemble their lowercase pairs. A,B,D,E,G,H,LN,Q,R,T.

Seeing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at an exhibition, a man approached Picasso (who happened to be at the exhibition) and asked why he didn’t paint people the way they looked. "Well, how do they look?" asked Picasso. The man took a photograph of his wife from his wallet and handed it over. Picasso looked at it, then handing it back said "She is small, isn’t she. And flat too"

"A metaphor is a leap that unites two worlds" Garcia Lorca

An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications

"no object can be tied down to any one sort of reality; a stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach or anything else you like, just as this file in my hand can be metamorphosed into a shoehorn or a spoon, according to the way in which I use it. The first time this phenomenon struck me was in the trenches during the First World War when my batman turned a bucket into a brazier by poking a few holes in it with his bayonet and filling it with coke. for me this commonplace incident had a poetic significance: I began to see things in a new way" Georges Braque

A scientist, an engineer and a designer were arguing about the height of a church steeple. As luck would have it a man walked by with a barometer and joined the debate. To resolve the argument he challenged them to solve the problem using barometer. The scientist measured the barometric pressure on the ground and then at the top of the steeple and calculated the height using the difference. The engineer dismissed this method as too cumbersome and took the barometer to the top of the steeple and drop it and worked out the height by timing the fall. The designer popped into the church and offered the barometer to the verger in exchange for a look at the plans. The simplest route to solution is usually the best.

The sea squirt roams around looking for rock, when it finds one it sticks to it for the rest of its life and since it no longer needs its brain, it eats it.

An antique three legged stool was made that way so it could stand on uneven floors. Simple no further development required

Marty Neumeier "Problem + fresh perspective X intuition = concept" e.g. Gutenberg could not figure out how to simultaneously press a large number of letter seals onto a single sheet of paper. At a wine festival he examined a wine press and suddenly realised that a wine press with a few alterations, plus letter seals would result in the printing press.”

“No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing.”

Edgar Degas

Seems like a pretty good description of the creative elements in any field. Only after the hard work of studying and cogitating on the problem, will the blinding flash of inspiration come.

Quote via QI.com