garygilliland:

Who knew dead flies were funny? Apparently Swedish photographer Magnus Muhr did because he has started to make cartoons using dead flies as the protagonists.

MUHR PHOTOGRAPHY

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 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

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

Phil McKinney’s Killer Innovations blog and podcast consistently provides insight on creativity and innovation from the VP and CTO of HP’s personal systems group.

Core 77 an overview of work and writing in the industrial design arena.

Geek and Poke Cartoons a funny and insightful look at the world of project management and technology.

BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time a radio show / podcast where “Melvyn Bragg and guests investigate the history of ideas.”

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.

1. Listen first, then design
2. Don’t avoid the obvious
3. The problem contains the solution
4. Indulge your obsessions
5. Love is the answer

Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks from 99% on Vimeo.

Having spent too many years working with consultants from the big firms I can sympathise with the ideas George Orwell presented in his 1946 essay on Politics and the English Language. Swap out politics and replace it with consultant, business or marketing speak and you can see that the trend for poor ideas disguised with fancy writing which Orwell identified sixty years ago is still going strong.

Three quotes in particular have stuck with me

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

“….language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

If you recognise any of these things in your own communications then maybe it’s time to change your writing or examine the ideas behind it.

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

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