The creative process
This week is all about creativity. What it means to be creative, and some methods to help foster it.
The first technique I've taken a look at through is the ICEDIP method, which I was introduced to through this week's lecture video on creativity and innovation (Tanya Krzywinska, n.d.).
The ICEDIP method is a creative process developed by Geoff Petty in his book How to be better at... creativity (Petty, 2017). It's a structured method to help improve your creative generation skills. It's broken down into six clear and digestible stages:
- Inspiration - research and generate as many ideas as you can. Be brave, uninhibited and experiment.
- Clarification - Where you set your goals.
- Evaluation - review and learn from what you have done.
- Distillation - Break it down and decide which idea to work on.
- Incubation - Leave the work alone, on the surface of your mind, but unacted upon.
- Perspiration - Bring your best ideas to life. The sprint that makes your ideas happen.
Thinking back on my own experiences as a creative director, although I have never consciously referred to or used the ICEDIP method, it's a familiar process.
In the spark forum this week, I talked about a method I used to generate creative ideas when resources and time are low, but in fact, in reality, it's a method used on most projects I've worked on as creative director:
I'd kick off with research and objectives. This is about information gathering. It enables me to build an end goal and equips me with the detail of the project. It influences and informs what I do and is absolutely critical to building purposeful direction.
Next is ideation. This is where the "space" comes. I use a couple of processes for this, but the one I'll talk about here is the idea bank. Every week (or as often as you could manage) in my studio, we'd set aside time to do an activity that encouraged exploration. I always chose an aimless walk.The condition was, you write down an idea at the end. If it's relating to the project and research, then great, but it could be any idea. An idea can be built on, and generally, most have potential, so no idea is considered bad by default. This enabled me to build up a bank of ideas that I could draw on in creative sessions, which tend to be more time-constrained (such as prototyping or brainstorming). I really recommend this kind of scheduled space. A few of you have mentioned you use the wandering mind, and this is really just about making sure you purposefully allow yourself the space to use that and have tools in place to capture and reference what you come up with.
Next is problem-solving - This is the actual development stage of the project, where I bring together all elements, goals, ideas and objectives, to find a design solution for what you are building.Then beyond that, there is review, evaluation and iteration to refine the project.
Then beyond that, there is review, evaluation and iteration to refine the project.
Reflecting on my own experiences and looking at the ICEDIP method in detail, the first thing that interests me is that ICEDIP encourages an even freer ideation stage, which occurs before the goal-setting stage. This could be because often projects I have worked on have client-led objectives already, but I'd be interested in trying ideas generation without a goal in mind, to begin with. I plan to make this a big part of my challenge activity this week.
Another section that interests me is the idea that good ideas are found amongst bad ones.
"Many people wonder where creative people find their good ideas. The answer is, in amongst a huge pile of bad ones." (Inspiration - Geoff Petty, 2021)
At its core, I completely agree with this. But as mentioned in my spark forum post, I prefer to think of no ideas as bad. There are some you pursue, and others you don't. But accepting any idea is at least worth scribbling down, and revisiting after a little space makes sure you don't miss anything. I think in that way, all ideas are useful.
List of Figures
Figure 1. Vestby-Clarke, S., 2021. The ICEDIP Method. [image] Available at: <http://indie.samvestbyclarke.com/bl-content/uploads/pages/71abac7dc821ae7058ada67bf10e1b07/icedip-1.jpg> [Accessed 7 June 2021].
References
Flex.falmouth.ac.uk. 2021. Week 2: Spark Forum. [online] Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/discussion_topics/22193?module_item_id=54078 [Accessed 7 June 2021].
Krzywinska, T., n.d. Creativity & Innovation: Games and App Development. [video] Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-2-what-is-creativity?module_item_id=54079 [Accessed 7 June 2021].
Petty, G., 2017. How to be better at... Creativity. 2nd ed. Raleigh, NC: Lulu.
Geoff Petty. 2021. Inspiration - Geoff Petty. [online] Available at: https://geoffpetty.com/creativity/inspiration [Accessed 7 June 2021].