forgetting creativity

07/02/2020

Week 2’s lecture proved to be a unique talk on creativity and opening our minds. I had found great insight into last week’s lecture and felt my understanding for such a term of design to be complete. So what is creativity? Is it a mind for uniqueness? Or simply a different perspective of the ever changing world that floods our senses every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every…week.

Being that “opening of the eyes” was the topic of the lecture it was weirdly comical to say the least. The whole class could be described as “acting the maggot” but it was nonetheless brilliant. Trying to confuse/push the mind made it so… odd with going upside down to get a different “perspective” if you will or drawing the other half of a face that for nearly everyone resulted in a pug inspired piece of art.

It had been well established that the class was all about loosening the mind, breaking free of societal boundaries and becoming a creative factory. From last week it was determined that design was providing a solution for a problem. This solution is realistically supposed to be good considering it’s a solution. Solutions are inherently good yes? OK. Onwards. The topic was Eating/Drinking, come up with the most ludicrous ideas. Though a great activity, the “designs” can only be described as harmful. Myself and Matt’s work involved many products of radioactive, explosive and “shooty” qualities. It was great to not only release ourselves from creating only designs that are feasible to experiencing the constant flow of horribly dangerous concoctions. When presenting our one stupid idea each team had decided on your typical American advertisement voice. WOW!! BY NOW!! HALF OFF!! BANG AND THE DIRT IS GONE!! Being that a potassium straw was a choice of ours. “It’ll go off with a bang” seemed to fit very snuggly.

Creativity requires inspiration and inspiration is a sensory input. This section had only taken up 20/30 minutes of the class’s 4 hours but it hugely important for me. Its importance lies with where to start when it comes to a new project. For me and every designer around me starting feels slow and choppy. You throw some things down, a word or even a sketch maybe but still no traction. I find inspiration is the key here. Since year 1 I have used nature as inspiration, birds in particular. Following the long legs of a grey heron or the aerodynamic beak of a common kingfisher is like taking an already perfect design of millions of years and bringing it into the human with iteration after iteration. This process usually varies from a week to a few months as opposed to evolution’s millions of years. You see it’s not just about the end product of your design, it’s about your journey, your experience but most importantly your increased knowledge of design.