Week Two - Developing Ideational Fluency / Managing a Creative Environment

"An idea is our visual example of something seen - in real life, in our memory, in our imagination,in our dreams." - Anna Held Audette from the book, The Black Canvas

The principle I would be exploring today is Developing Ideational Fluency. In this principle we are supposed to show how I used methods such as Brainstorms and Mind mapping to help me generate spontaneous ideas. These are very useful methods as I am in the habit of using these from when I was in school. We used these when doing compositions and that is why when we started doing our magazine project I found it very helpful and useful to think of ideas. For example, we had to think of ideas for the name of the magazine and this is what we produced in terms of ideas.

With the use of a handy dictionary, we started by finding synonyms of the word unseen and writing down ideas we felt were appropriate to the contents of our magazine. Further using the words we found and finding synonyms of those words, we got quite a lot of words that allowed us to pick the most suitable name for our magazine.

In another place I used brainstorming to help me generate ideas for my article in the magazine, titled discovering Birmingham. As everything is new to me I didn’t know what to put down as most significant. This brainstorming helped me to select the most important and appropriate facts, in my view. By visually enhancing the mind maps through drawings enabled me to think further about how the layout of my magazine could include and how I could achieve a visually attractive piece.

As to other ways of spontaneous thinking, one thing that usually worked for me was sitting with a pen and paper, in any room with lots of stuff in it, and just jotting down ideas that came to me by looking at certain things. Even when you are outside, taking lots of photographs of completely random things and people, I discover on coming home that I could find lots of ideas in them. My inspiration is derived from Da Vinci’s notebook pages.

The second principle I would looking in detail is how to manage a Creative Environment. Different artists describe their creative processes in different ways, as I discovered through my research. An artist by the name of Kimberly Brookes describes what inspires her creative processes in 9 stages: “vision, hope, diving in, excitement, doubt, clarity, obsession, resolution, exhibitionism and silence.”

However, to delve deeper in the creative processes of an artist, digging in their workspace to know what inspires and drives them can be an inspiration. Just like a particular trait identifies a group of people, in the same way studios reflect the ideas and designs of their owners. Here is an example of PDG+creative studios and what they have to say about themselves:

“You’ve been warned how not to judge a book. Nor can you judge the PDG+creative space by its simple surroundings or geographic locale. Take a look. This is our space. Our sanctum. Open. Colourful. Contemporary. Edgy. Interactive. A melting pot of thought, inspiration, concept and vision. The PDG+creative studio is an external expression of all that happens within the minds of our creative masters. Step inside. See creative in action.”

Sam Poole's work space

Sam Poole's studio

I looked at other creative spaces as well that inspire me and I found this one owned by Sam Poole, and I love it because it’s so colourful and there are so many opportunities to find inspirations for ideas. That is how I would like to work, being surrounded by artwork and just everything colourful and fun, so that whenever I sit down to work, I get bombarded by ideas and I have all the things within reach, so that I could work quickly on it before I lose them.  The neat and tidy space and availability of books makes it even more pleasurable to work in as I am a huge fan of books. This would be a small sanctuary for me to increase my creativity in every way, not just remain restricted to graphic design but in other areas as well such as literature and photography. As of right now, I make do with the small messy space of my bedroom!