Creative Techniques

Helpful tips, techniques and ways of thinking:

· The 4 R’s – Revolution, Re-expression, Related worlds, Random.

· Sun vs. Rain – Be more Sun, take time to understand someone else’s idea and nurture it.

· Composition – consider your layout, experiment, try drawing your idea from different points of view.

· Use the medium

· Take away all of the words

· Remove all the pictures

· Think about Metaphors

It is about deliberate practice. By repeating these techniques, I will be able to come up with more ideas and get to the core of what I am trying to communicate. As with most things, it takes practice. I’m not going to instantly remember them all. I will look back at my notes, I will discuss my ideas with others, I will get a lot of things wrong before I get them better. (Notice that I didn’t say right.)

The other lesson that I learnt this week is to allow myself to be in the learning zone. It is very tempting to try and be in the performance zone all the time. (This insight came from Eduardo Briceño’s TED talk, ‘How to get better at the things you care about’) However, I think that in the long term I will become a better creative if I can accept the fact that I will make mistakes, and learn from them.

Today I looked at medium and how I could use the things around me as a source of inspiration. I enjoyed looking around the studios, noticing the small details and thinking how I could use or reference them in my scamps. It can be very tempting to just look at a web browser and collect all of your image references from there. I am enjoying having the freedom to draw my ideas as physical scamps. There is something to be said for handmade, for analogue techniques and I want to champion this.

However, I would argue that the most important thing this week is my dog’s birthday! He is going to be ten this weekend. If anyone is reading this, please wish him a happy birthday.