This where I write and sometimes think
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.
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.
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.”
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
Thanks to generosity of others there are some great free idea generation tools available on the web. None of the tools will solve your problems or produce an earth shattering idea by themselves but they will lead you towards the solution you are seeking.
Google Sets is a simple service, enter a few items from a set and Google will try to predict the rest of set. Useful for widening the scope of an ideation session.
Whack Pack cards are Roger von Oech’s classic collection of creativity strategies. Refresh the page to be presented with another card.
Free The Genie is a set of four brainstorming games presented by Idea Champions.
Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies are a set of cards designed to provide inspiration for creativity or problem solving. The minimal design application provides a quick web based application to access the first four editions of the cards. The key is to draw one card only and trust it. Regardless of how inapplicable the card may seem on initial viewing, spend time and consider how the strategy could be applied to your current situation.
Wikipedia Mind Map Generator a very powerful visual tool for exploring the connections to a topic. Enter a keyword and the software will examine the associated Wikipedia article and generate a mind map of connected articles. The resultant mind map can then be exported to the free mind-mapping application Freemind.
* I have no affiliation with any of the organisations above.
Multi-award winning graphic designer Michael Bierut claims he is not creative but more like a doctor who helps sick patients. In this video he distils the knowledge from his career into 5 maxims that are useful not only for designers but for anyone who is starting out on a project.
Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks from 99% on Vimeo.
Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentation, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
- Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters To A Young Poet
In cities around the world, areas comprised of smooth surfaces with interesting curves and bumps have become a magnet for skateboarders. In most instances authorities are quick to clamp down on this behaviour and so starts an on-going battle between the skaters and the users of the area. The result is an under utilised resource and two disgruntled user groups.
In an effort to combat this problem Foreign Office Architects, have designed the Opera House in Oslo to incorporate skateable areas. To ensure that skaters are kept to the designated areas, smooth marble is used for skating routes. Whilst rough marble is used to deter skaters in the more acoustically sensitive areas.
By embracing the skaters, the creative energy which would have been dissipated on discouraging skaters has been applied to creating something which is welcoming to everyone. This has created a building which hasn’t been bound by the constraints normally imposed on large public areas and a resource which is useful to a wider demographic and is in use more of the time.
What if the music industry encouraged file sharers? What if oil companies worked with green energy providers to provide solutions which combined the best of both? What if you worked with your competitors to combine your R&D efforts?
What opportunities can you find by embracing your enemies?
via Wired
Flickr Photo by pacmikey
This is not supposed to be a review but rather an attempt to bring a great book to the attention of a few more people.
Twyla Tharp is one of America’s greatest choreographers with a career spanning decades. The book uses aspects of her career, both highs and lows, to put forward the thesis that creativity is less about ‘genius’ and more about disciplined work habits. It focuses on the skills, routines and traits which aid creativity.
If you’re like me before you even start reading this book you are confronted by several disconcerting things.
The anecdotes in the book echo the best creativity research and the exercises at the end of each chapter help put the lessons into context for the reader. At just over 250 pages well spaced pages the book provides a short, easily digested guide to both professionalism and creativity. Unlike most books on creativity this is less about tips and tricks and more about real world application. Definitely well worth a read.
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life - Twyla Tharp: Books
NB I don’t receive any payment from Amazon for this link.
