Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Method in the Creative Madness

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

There is method to my madness. Said method was passed along to me by my neighbors talking dog. (via @badbanana)

Working on the creative industry can be maddening. And sometimes it’s really hard to see that you can have a process or methodology to help your creativity instead of just going completely insane.

By all means, keep in mind I am not trying to sell my method as the right or only way to anything. Staying on top of your creativity is a weird game and one that has no perfect and defined set of rules (like most things creative).

This means create your own set of rules and live by them. This post is here to try and give you some direction and ideas on how to be able to keep doing creative work without burnout or losing your mind. Everyone has their own tricks to be able to get their brain pumping. These are some of the ones that have long worked for me:

1. Make lots of notes

Have a piece of paper and a pen or moleskine and pencil (whatever catches your fancy) always ready and next to you. Making sure you are always writing down your ideas will not only help you by making it easy to keeping track of them but also by making you feel safe your ideas won’t be lost or go to waste. This feeling of safety can, subconsciously, trick your brain into coming up with even more ideas. (I also like to use Evernote and Things on the iPhone to help with that).

2. Have an idea log

Not only write your ideas down but organize them. Throw old stuff away. Re-write stuff from old pieces of paper to new, clean ones with more space and throw the old ones away. Type it all on the computer if you’d like, that way you’ll read them again to yourself and not only can you become inspired for more ideas but you can probably pick the good ones from the bad ones. (I use 37signals Backpack for organizing my blog post ideas, I write down titles, URLs and anything else I find important to make the process of writing easier later on).

3. Benchmark (learn from the best)

Visit websites that offer inspiration ideas, visit friends websites, visit sites from the competition, by all means navigate the web and see what is around you as much as it is possible. There are a lot of good websites out there and a lot of them excel on one detail or another (like shown in Pattern Tap) and by navigating these you might be inspired to come up with solutions for your design problems. Also, read books, (lots of them) look at book covers, look at product packaging on your local store, etc.

In reality, good design is all around you. The problem is, if you’re not paying real attention to it, good design is invisible, it just blends in with your expectations. (What helps keeping me organized and with a good collection of materials I find online and off is Littlesnapper on the mac and on the iPhone. With it I make my own collection of logos, fonts, sites and packaging that I enjoy and where I can always revisit and look for inspiration).

4. Breaks are your friends

If you think that you’ll have a great idea after 18 hours working straight you’re wrong. Take breaks. Switch between projects. Something I heard a long time ago in college and really worked for me: Write down your ideas, put them in a drawer and look at them tomorrow morning. If they still look good, pursue them.

If you don’t have time for all that, go drink a cup of coffee or tea. You could also try closing your eyes for five minutes. Some say that this makes your brain achieve maximum performance and a moment of thought organizing can be providential for you to keep sanity intact and to get the calm feeling of flow that usually helps you reaching great insights.

5. Have a life

A very important part of being a creative professional and of keeping your sanity, is having moments where you forget you are a creative professional. You need to experience things in life and make the best of it. Watching good movies, listening to music, playing video games, going on fun trips or walks. Anything that you like, that is not related to being a creative worker bee. All that is essential to getting good and interesting information in your brain. So, when you need to dive in deep into your thoughts and come up with a revolutionary new concept for that client of yours, having life experiences could make the difference.

CONCLUSION

As I said before, these are the ideas from my work experience to help others achieve their own methodology. But it’s important to have one, specially in the fast-paced environment we live in where we are suppose to squeeze out ideas from our brains daily, and they all have to be good. Creating your own methodology and being able to use on a day to day basis, and being able to produce good creative work daily, may very well be the difference between sanity and insanity.

By the way, this post was inspired by the Burnout article by Scott Boms for A List Apart, and by the movie Crazy People with Dudley Moore.

Tags: creativity, design, methodology
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