Creative Creativity: Inspiration and Tools for Creativity

Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

I've been reading CAD Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies, and T-Shaped People: Inside the World of Design Thinking and How It Can Spark Creativity and Innovation by Warren Berger. The basic idea of the book is to teach you to look at the world as a designer and then to show you how apply that to whatever your passion happens to be. I'll write more about when I'm finished.

In passing, he mentioned Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth and from the little bit he said about it I had to immediatley put down the book and look it up. Bruce Mau is a very successful designer and he wanted to put down his thoughts on creativity in a manifesto. It's 43 ways of changing your perspective and getting started. It's 43 ways to move forward when your stuck. It's a map out of the creative rut that you might find yourself in.

Bruce Mau wrote it in 1998 and unleashed it on the internet. It's one of those things that just might change your life. I'm cutting and pasting a few bits of it below, but you should read the whole thing.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Read the rest

What should good design accomplish?

From a series of inspirational posters available here!

My Favorite Magazine: Esopus

Esopus is more than a magazine, each issue is a work of art. The "articles" in the magazine are actually pages turned over to a different artist to do whatever they like with. From found beauty to pages from sketch journals to movie scripts and photographs, it's packed full of fantastic stuff. The design of the magazine and presentation is as impressive as the material it contains.

I got latest issue in the mail today and was inspired to write about it because it has a "can't miss" section. 24 scanned pages from a journal a soldier kept in a German POW camp. 2nd Lieut Gerald Limon drew cartoons, recorded the lyrics of songs written in camp and kept a detailed list of what books he read while he was there. Beautiful, heart wrenching and  completely inspirational.

The price for subscribing might seem high ($18) for a magazine that only comes out twice a year, but they actually subsidize with donations and sell it at less than cost because they want to reach a wider audience. It's non-profit, which means no ads and no one to answer to.

Did I mention that it comes with a CD of music? This month it's songs inspired by dreams that readers sent in. Did I mention that there are removable pieces and foldouts? This month, there's a pocket page that holds a reproduction of an old handwriting exercise book that has been subtly modified by an artist.

I love it. This is their site. I give it my complete and unpaid endorsement.

Good Design: Appeal and Individuality

The always excellent Ping Magazine (The Tokyo based magazine about "Design and Making Things) has an interview with a designer whose products I've admired without realizing they were from the same company. Hiranao Tsuboi of the design company 100% designed a water glass that leaves a cherry blossom of dew when you lift it off the table and a florescent light shaped like a bamboo shoot.

One of the questions he's asked in the interview is what makes good design and I think makes an interesting observation about mass produced products reflecting their designer.

One of the attractions of product design is that it can be mass produced, reaching many. I’m always amazed by the fact that someone I don’t know sees my designs. Since a tool needs reasonability and inevitability, I would like to create something which is in each user’s interest and still represents my individuality.

Inspiration for Design and Food

Today I wanted to share one of my favorite design sites, notcot.org. NotCot features an array of reader submitted pictures and stories featuring interesting design. The visual part is the hook, you won't find any big blocks of text here, just interesting visual after interesting visual. If you want more information, each links to its source. Today, they're featuring everything from art cars covered in toy cars to benches made from tennis balls.

Not only that, but they have two other sites with the same basic setup. notcouture.com is their clothing site (which is just getting started and really hasn't found its feet yet) and tastespotting.com which focuses on food. This is a foodies dream, page after page of luscious food photographs. Some link to recipes or suppliers, others just blog entries from people trying to make you jealous of what they ate for dinner.

If you work in a visual medium NotCot is a great place to start your day and a quick way to keep up with what's going on.

Make Trash Your Treasure - Creativity Tip

I'm reading Life of the Party a history of the Adams practical joke and novelty company. You know them, they make all those tiny Joy Buzzers and Whoopie Cushions you find on wire rounders in novelty stores. It turns out that their company was founded on a creative use of industrial waste.

Their founder work for a dye company that paid handsomely to remove the chemical dianisidine from the German coal-tar derivative they sold. He noticed that when people were around the chemical they sneezed uncontrollably. So, he packaged it in a tube (labelled Cachoo sneezing powder) and sold it as a practical joke!

So often, what other people dismiss or throw away is actually a good source of ideas or material. Adams built an empire on a waste product. There could be any number of valuable assets just waiting for you in the nearest garbage can.

One word of caution, despite being labeled "It's harmless, it only makes you sneeze," it turned out to be toxic and eventually be banned by the FDA. So, modern sneezing powder is just ground pepper.

The author of Life of the Party, Kirk Demarais, has a great blog with lots of info about the novelty and toy industries.

Designing For The Poorest 90%

Here's an interesting article on an exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. Most design work is done for the richest 10% of the world. That's who buys all those fancy cars and unnecessary iPod add ons. What about the other 90%?

A lot of designers are donating their time to non-profits and helping to solve problems in impoverished parts of the world. The picture at the top of this article is of a Q-Drum that lets people transport water in a rolling wheel instead of carrying it. Imagine the impact that could have on a family that has to walk miles for fresh water. Another invention is a straw that filters contaminated water and makes it drinkable. Or an amazing solar powered Microfilm Projector and Portable Library that lets remote areas teach adults at night after work and includes a whole easily transported library.

This is a great challenge to present to creative people. Have you ever thought about an idea for the other 90% of the world? It won't make you rich and it's not going to be coveted by teenagers, but it will change the world.

Design for the Other 90%

Clever Decorating for Small Apartments

Apartment Therapy is having a Smallest, Coolest Apartment Contest. They are trying to find the most beautifully and creatively decorated apartments that are smaller than 650 sq feet (60 sq meters).  They go from classy to eclectic and all of them use those tiny spaces amazingly well. Don't forget to scroll down, each entry ends with a floor plan for the space.

Even if you aren't interested in decorating, it's always fun to be nosey and poke around in other people's stuff.

View Contest Entries
(link via Awesome!)