Tipografsko porodicno stablo
Novi članak Stivena Helera na blogu Print magazina predstavlja plakat koji je slovolivnica Bauer napravila 1937, proslavljajući stogodišnjicu firme. Koren svih tipografskih pisama i razgranavanje do '37. Kao što kaže Heler na kraju članka, kako li bi ovo drvo izgledalo danas?
Bodoni Girl
Designed by Andreas Xenoulis
Screen Printed by tind
Andreas kaže:
This
poster is a typographic project made out of Bodoni letters being
inspired by the female sensitivity. Bodoni is a series of serif
typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813)
in 1798. Like every typeface, Bodoni has its own charisma. Its presence
in design always reflected the good taste, the classic, the elegant,
the different. Bodoni has narrower underlying structure with flat and
unbracketed serifs, extreme contrast between thick & thin strokes
and an overall geometric construction.
The reason i decided to use silkscreen as a method was to add a little spark using gold colours and gold foils to reflect the ultimate woman nobility.
The reason i decided to use silkscreen as a method was to add a little spark using gold colours and gold foils to reflect the ultimate woman nobility.
æ - Honoring The Forgotten Women of Type History
I have always wondered about the stories behind fonts with women's names. I studied the three typefaces: Mrs Eaves, Caecilia and Joanna. I decided to honor these three forgotten women in the history of typography through this project.
I chose the symmetrical ligature ae to reflect the
intimate relation between the type designers and the special women after
whom they named their typefaces. From there, I developed a set of three
necklaces.
I designed the packaging of the necklaces as business cards considering the different identities these women represented. Joanna was Eric Gill's daughter, Mrs Eaves was Baskerville's housekeeper and mistress, and Caecilia was Peter Matthias Noordzij's wife.
What a delightful representation of the women in these typographers' lives.
Designed by Nour Tabet a student attending Maryland Institute College of Art.
studentski rad, via TheDieline
13 Writing Tips From Chuck Palahniuk
Tekst autora knjiga među kojima je širokoj publici verovatno najpoznatija Fight Club. Saveti o pisanju koji vrlo lako mogu da se primene na svaki kreativni proces i njegove rezultate, pa i na dizajn i sve srodne grafičke delatnosti.
{ Tekst preuzet sa LitReactor.com }
Twenty years ago, a friend and I walked around downtown Portland at Christmas. The big department stores: Meier and Frank… Fredrick and Nelson… Nordstroms… their big display windows each held a simple, pretty scene: a mannequin wearing clothes or a perfume bottle sitting in fake snow. But the windows at the J.J. Newberry’s store, damn, they were crammed with dolls and tinsel and spatulas and screwdriver sets and pillows, vacuum cleaners, plastic hangers, gerbils, silk flowers, candy – you get the point. Each of the hundreds of different objects was priced with a faded circle of red cardboard. And walking past, my friend, Laurie, took a long look and said, “Their window-dressing philosophy must be: ‘If the window doesn’t look quite right – put more in’.”
She said the perfect comment at the perfect moment, and I remember it two decades later because it made me laugh. Those other, pretty display windows… I’m sure they were stylist and tasteful, but I have no real memory of how they looked.
For this essay, my goal is to put more in. To put together a kind-of Christmas stocking of ideas, with the hope that something will be useful. Or like packing the gift boxes for readers, putting in candy and a squirrel and a book and some toys and a necklace, I’m hoping that enough variety will guarantee that something here will occur as completely asinine, but something else might be perfect.
Number One:
Two years ago, when I wrote the first of these essays it was about my “egg timer method” of writing. You never saw that essay, but here’s the method: When you don’t want to write, set an egg timer for one hour (or half hour) and sit down to write until the timer rings. If you still hate writing, you’re free in an hour. But usually, by the time that alarm rings, you’ll be so involved in your work, enjoying it so much, you’ll keep going. Instead of an egg timer, you can put a load of clothes in the washer or dryer and use them to time your work. Alternating the thoughtful task of writing with the mindless work of laundry or dish washing will give you the breaks you need for new ideas and insights to occur. If you don’t know what comes next in the story… clean your toilet. Change the bed sheets. For Christ sakes, dust the computer. A better idea will come.
Number Two:
Your audience is smarter than you imagine. Don’t be afraid to experiment with story forms and time shifts. My personal theory is that younger readers distain most books – not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today’s reader is smarter. Movies have made us very sophisticated about storytelling. And your audience is much harder to shock than you can ever imagine.
Number Three:
Before you sit down to write a scene, mull it over in your mind and know the purpose of that scene. What earlier set-ups will this scene pay off? What will it set up for later scenes? How will this scene further your plot? As you work, drive, exercise, hold only this question in your mind. Take a few notes as you have ideas. And only when you’ve decided on the bones of the scene – then, sit and write it. Don’t go to that boring, dusty computer without something in mind. And don’t make your reader slog through a scene in which little or nothing happens.
Number Four:
Surprise yourself. If you can bring the story – or let it bring you – to a place that amazes you, then you can surprise your reader. The moment you can see any well-planned surprise, chances are, so will your sophisticated reader.
Number Five:
When you get stuck, go back and read your earlier scenes, looking for dropped characters or details that you can resurrect as “buried guns.” At the end of writing Fight Club, I had no idea what to do with the office building. But re-reading the first scene, I found the throw-away comment about mixing nitro with paraffin and how it was an iffy method for making plastic explosives. That silly aside (… paraffin has never worked for me…) made the perfect “buried gun” to resurrect at the end and save my storytelling ass.
Number Six:
Use writing as your excuse to throw a party each week – even if you call that party a “workshop.” Any time you can spend time among other people who value and support writing, that will balance those hours you spend alone, writing. Even if someday you sell your work, no amount of money will compensate you for your time spent alone. So, take your “paycheck” up front, make writing an excuse to be around people. When you reach the end of your life – trust me, you won’t look back and savor the moments you spent alone.
Number Seven:
Let yourself be with Not Knowing. This bit of advice comes through a hundred famous people, through Tom Spanbauer to me and now, you. The longer you can allow a story to take shape, the better that final shape will be. Don’t rush or force the ending of a story or book. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes. You don’t have to know every moment up to the end, in fact, if you do it’ll be boring as hell to execute.
Number Eight:
If you need more freedom around the story, draft to draft, change the character names. Characters aren’t real, and they aren’t you. By arbitrarily changing their names, you get the distance you need to really torture a character. Or worse, delete a character, if that’s what the story really needs.
Number Nine:
There are three types of speech – I don’t know if this is TRUE, but I heard it in a seminar and it made sense. The three types are: Descriptive, Instructive, and Expressive. Descriptive: “The sun rose high…” Instructive: “Walk, don’t run…” Expressive: “Ouch!” Most fiction writers will only use one – at most, two – of these forms. So use all three. Mix them up. It’s how people talk.
Number Ten:
Write the book you want to read.
Number Eleven:
Get author book jacket photos taken now, while you’re young. And get the negatives and copyright on those photos.
Number Twelve:
Write about the issues that really upset you. Those are the only things worth writing about. In his course, called “Dangerous Writing,” Tom Spanbauer stresses that life is too precious to spend it writing tame, conventional stories to which you have no personal attachment. There are so many things that Tom talked about but that I only half remember: the art of “manumission,” which I can’t spell, but I understood to mean the care you use in moving a reader through the moments of a story. And “sous conversation,” which I took to mean the hidden, buried message within the obvious story. Because I’m not comfortable describing topics I only half-understand, Tom’s agreed to write a book about his workshop and the ideas he teaches. The working title is “A Hole In The Heart,” and he plans to have a draft ready by June 2006, with a publishing date set in early 2007.
Number Thirteen:
Another Christmas window story. Almost every morning, I eat breakfast in the same diner, and this morning a man was painting the windows with Christmas designs. Snowmen. Snowflakes. Bells. Santa Claus. He stood outside on the sidewalk, painting in the freezing cold, his breath steaming, alternating brushes and rollers with different colors of paint. Inside the diner, the customers and servers watched as he layered red and white and blue paint on the outside of the big windows. Behind him the rain changed to snow, falling sideways in the wind.
The painter’s hair was all different colors of gray, and his face was slack and wrinkled as the empty ass of his jeans. Between colors, he’d stop to drink something out of a paper cup.
Watching him from inside, eating eggs and toast, somebody said it was sad. This customer said the man was probably a failed artist. It was probably whiskey in the cup. He probably had a studio full of failed paintings and now made his living decorating cheesy restaurant and grocery store windows. Just sad, sad, sad.
This painter guy kept putting up the colors. All the white “snow,” first. Then some fields of red and green. Then some black outlines that made the color shapes into Xmas stockings and trees.
A server walked around, pouring coffee for people, and said, “That’s so neat. I wish I could do that…”
And whether we envied or pitied this guy in the cold, he kept painting. Adding details and layers of color. And I’m not sure when it happened, but at some moment he wasn’t there. The pictures themselves were so rich, they filled the windows so well, the colors so bright, that the painter had left. Whether he was a failure or a hero. He’d disappeared, gone off to wherever, and all we were seeing was his work.
------------------------------------------------
For homework, ask your family and friends what you were like as a child. Better yet, ask them what they were like as children. Then, just listen.
Merry Christmas, and thank you for reading my work.
Inspiration vs. Imitation
Pročitajte šta uspešna mlada njujorška dizajnerka Džesika Hiš kaže o razlici između inspiracije i imitacije. Gde je granica.
Inspiration vs. Imitation
Every now and then I get a really lovely email from an
aspiring letterer that is about to publish a passion project of his or
her own. They tell me my work was an inspiration and that they can’t
wait to share their creation with the world. I feel all warm and fuzzy
inside for a moment…until I click on their link and realize that much of
what they intend to publish is nearly a direct tracing of my work.
A lot of established illustrators and designers deal with the same thing—students or young professionals that rip them off without realizing it. Addressing these young designers can be really heartbreaking because you know that they had the purest of intentions. So here’s a little post to all the hungry, young designers that are struggling to find their own voice, but end up a bit too close to their inspirations. There are definitely people that maliciously rip artists off left and right, and this post is not for them. They are evil and cannot be helped.
1. It’s OK to copy people’s work. [GIANT ASTERISK!]
A lot of established illustrators and designers deal with the same thing—students or young professionals that rip them off without realizing it. Addressing these young designers can be really heartbreaking because you know that they had the purest of intentions. So here’s a little post to all the hungry, young designers that are struggling to find their own voice, but end up a bit too close to their inspirations. There are definitely people that maliciously rip artists off left and right, and this post is not for them. They are evil and cannot be helped.
1. It’s OK to copy people’s work. [GIANT ASTERISK!]
To be a good artist / letterer / designer / guitar player it takes practice. A lot of it. More than you can even fathom when you’re starting out. If you wanted to become a great guitar player, you wouldn’t buy a fancy guitar and immediately start composing songs… you would pick up a song book, or look up some tablature music on the internet, and teach yourself how to play using other people’s music. You would emulate the greats and learn from them, as they learned from others in the past. You’d spend hours alone trying to be like Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page or whomever you really admired. Then, once you were well practiced and felt confident in your abilities to play, you’d form a band, you’d write your own songs, and you’d find your own voice.
When you’re learning, it’s not wrong to copy people—to
learn from them the way that they learned from others before them. What
many young artists have a problem realizing though, is that the work
you create while practicing and learning is completely separate of what
you do professionally. Just because you can play OK Computer cover to cover doesn’t mean you should record an album of your renditions and release them under your name. You know
that any such action would leave you up to your eyeballs in legal
problems. Copy all you wish in private, and once you feel confident in
your skills, create your own original public work.
2. Not everything you make should be on the internet.
When you’re starting out and have a teeny portfolio of student work, it can be very very tempting to publish everything
you’re working on, whether it’s practice or actual published work. It’s
especially hard because, more often than not, the work you’re doing at
your day job is less than inspiring when you are starting out. It will
be really hard to resist showing off the illustration you created that
was inspired heavily by one of your heroes, because in reality it is
probably one of the nicest things you’ve made. But that’s the thing,
every new thing you make will be (should be) the nicest thing you’ve
made so far, because you’re learning and getting better with each and
every new project. Resist posting the practice—the piece that you know
is too close to its inspiration. Let that practice fuel original work
and then publish to your heart’s content.
3. Diversify your inspirations.
4. History is important.
5. Train your eye.
As you study design and illustration, something
similar will happen. At first all print-makery illustrators will look
the same, but soon you’ll be able to point out who did what and
eventually the differences will become so clear that you’ll be shocked
when your non-art friends don’t see them. And then the nerds will
welcome you into their world with a parade and cupcakes.
When you are starting out, you accidentally rip people
off all the time because your eye just doesn’t see the difference
between what you’re doing and what someone you’re inspired by is doing.
You think (anti-awesome) thoughts like “she doesn’t own swashes!”. Over
time though, once you spend a few months examining a lot of people’s
work, you can look at 10 different script letterers and think “OMG they
are SO different! How did I not see it!” If you don’t train yourself to
spot the differences, you’ll never be able to see them in your own work
and it will be very difficult to make anything original.
6. Just because it’s not illegal doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
7. Everybody knows everybody.
Whenever I’m alerted of a possible rip-offer, I try my
best to educate rather than chastise and gently nudge them to find
their own voice. If you see someone ripping-off someone you know or
admire, I suggest you do the same—initiate the conversation as a helpful
and concerned new friend, not an angry enemy. Most of the time the
offenders aren’t aware of how obvious their inspiration sources are.
We’re all guilty of it when we’re starting out, but hopefully this
article will remind some of you to keep that practice work out of your
portfolio, which will keep the angry blog commenters off your back.
Always keep practicing (and practicing, and
practicing), keep looking at beautiful work, keep researching others to
look up to and be inspired by. In no time you’ll be making beautiful
original work of your own.
Addendum:
Jonathan Hoefler wrote an amazing comment that I want to share as a part of the post:
If I can propose an 8th point, which is especially apropos in the type design world: “There’s a difference between making an imitation and selling it.”
At the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, you’ll often find high school students with
their sketchbooks out, camped out in front of the Giottos and Dürers.
It’s a time-honored way of learning: see, try to reproduce, and
discover. I think about this whenever I receive a heads-up that someone
had made a derivative of one of our fonts: the
Requiem-with-snipped-off-serifs that we’ll see in a font distributor’s
website, or the Gotham-with-a-different-M that’s profiled to great
applause on some online showcase. What makes these acts so troubling —
and, by the way, unquestionably illegal (it’s not at all a grey area) —
but makes the eager high schooler so charming?
To me, the
key difference is that the aspiring serif-clipper is not only passing
off the artist’s work as his own, but is doing real damage to the artist
he purportedly admires by competing in the same marketplace. It’s a
time-consuming and expensive distraction to investigate these things,
but one we’re compelled to do every single time, since each purchase of a
knockoff represents lost revenue. And when we share these discoveries
with the organizations that have unwittingly bought the knockoffs, it
invariably reflects poorly on our young serif-clipper: if there was a
relationship there, it is now ended. Everybody loses.
But the 17
year old with the sketchpad is entirely different. He’s not passing off
his Velasquez as a Velasquez, and he’s not passing it off as his own —
in fact, he’s not passing it off at all. It’s a learning exercise, and
if it’s presented at all, it’s always with the appropriate context. (“I
did this in art class, from the Gubbio Studiolo at the Met.”) It also
reveals what young artists finds fascinating, what they struggled with,
and what they learned. It’s been my experience that these kinds of acts
are met with great encouragement and support from the professional
community.
Frederic
Goudy’s commandment to typographers was “stop stealing sheep.” My advice
to aspiring type designers is “stop selling sheep.”
A few
commenters wanted to see/show actual examples of blatant-ripoffs. I’m
choosing not to post examples because the line between a rip-off and
something “heavily inspired-by but still passable” is so blurry. I think
by showing concrete examples I would be trying to make crystal-clear
something that generally isn’t. Former Supreme Court Justice Potter
Stewart said that he didn’t want to define exactly what hard-core
pornography was, stating “I know it when I see it”. You definitely know
derivative work when you see it, and the more you pay attention to
contemporary design and illustration as well as knowing your history,
the easier it is to spot. If you’re inexperienced, everything looks like
porn, if you know what you’re talking about you can spot the real stuff
from “artful photography” before you can blink. The key is to not cry
“porn” before you know what you’re talking about. So study up!
10 Ways to be more interesting
1. Go exploring.
Explore ideas, places, and opinions. The inside of the echo chamber is where are all the boring people hang out.
2. Share what you discover.
And be generous when you do. Not everybody went exploring with you. Let them live vicariously through your adventures.
3. Do something, Anything.
Dance. Talk. Build. Network. Play. Help. Create. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re doing it. Sitting around and complaining is not an acceptable form of “something” in case you were wondering.
4. Embrace your innate weirdness.
No one is normal. Everyone has quirks and insights unique to themselves. Don’t hide these things—they are what make you interesting.
5. Have a cause.
If you don’t give a damn about anything, no one will give a damn about you.
6. Minimize the swagger.
Egos get in the way of ideas. If your arrogance is more obvious than your expertise, you are someone other people avoid.
7. Give it a shot.
Try it out. Play around with a new idea. Do something strange. If you never leave your comfort zone, you won’t grow.
8. Hop off the bandwagon.
If everyone else is doing it, you’re already late to the party.Do your own thing, and others will hop onto the spiffy wagon you built yourself. Besides, it’s more fun to drive than it is to get pulled around.
9. Grow a pair.
Bravery is needed to have contrary opinions and to take unexpected paths. If you’re not courageous, you’re going to be hanging around the water cooler, talking about the guy who actually is.
10. Ignore the scolds.
Boring is safe, and you will be told to behave yourself. The scolds could have, would have, should have. But they didn’t. And they resent you for your adventures.
Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking
via CreativityPost
1. You are creative.
The artist is not a special
person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is
born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people
who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative
people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not
creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of
beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills
needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who
believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not
creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you
don't. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you
from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they
are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and
will make no effort to be a creative thinker.
2. Creative thinking is work.
You
must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the
process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience
to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work
passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which
are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than
by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting
systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music,
including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses,
during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings
and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works.
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were
no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were
simply bad.
3. You must go through the motions of being creative.
When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters
linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what
your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you
go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are
energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between
neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain
becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an
artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an
artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will
become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.
4. Your brain is not a computer.
Your brain is a
dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than
computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of
feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize
experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain
cannot tell the difference between an "actual" experience and an
experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what
enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary
scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One
day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting
the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This
led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing
experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.
5. There is no one right answer.
Reality is
ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both.
The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as
the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either
a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can
be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the
observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get
ideas, do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills
creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them.
Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can
before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or
white. It is grey.
6. Never stop with your first good idea.
Always
strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is
still better. In 1862, Phillip Reis demonstrated his invention which
could transmit music over the wires. He was days away from improving it
into a telephone that could transmit speech. Every communication expert
in Germany dissuaded him from making improvements, as they said the
telegraph is good enough. No one would buy or use a telephone. Ten years
later, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Spencer Silver
developed a new adhesive for 3M that stuck to objects but could easily
be lifted off. It was first marketed as a bulletin board adhesive so the
boards could be moved easily from place to place. There was no market
for it. Silver didn't discard it. One day Arthur Fry, another 3M
employee, was singing in the church's choir when his page marker fell
out of his hymnal. Fry coated his page markers with Silver's adhesive
and discovered the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without
damaging the page. Hence the Post-it Notes were born. Thomas Edison was
always trying to spring board from one idea to another in his work. He
spring boarded his work from the telephone (sounds transmitted) to the
phonograph (sounds recorded) and, finally, to motion pictures (images
recorded).
7. Expect the experts to be negative.
The more
expert and specialized a person becomes, the more their mindset becomes
narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they
believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and
different ideas, their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform
with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time
showing and explaining why it can't be done and why it can't work. They
will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might
demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all.
This is why when Fred Smith created Federal Express, every delivery
expert in the U.S. predicted its certain doom. After all, they said, if
this delivery concept was doable, the Post Office or UPS would have done
it long ago.
8. Trust your instincts.
Don't allow yourself to
get discouraged. Albert Einstein was expelled from school because his
attitude had a negative effect on serious students; he failed his
university entrance exam and had to attend a trade school for one year
before finally being admitted; and was the only one in his graduating
class who did not get a teaching position because no professor would
recommend him. One professor said Einstein was "the laziest dog" the
university ever had. Beethoven's parents were told he was too stupid to
be a music composer. Charles Darwin's colleagues called him a fool and
what he was doing "fool's experiments" when he worked on his theory of
biological evolution. Walt Disney was fired from his first job on a
newspaper because "he lacked imagination." Thomas Edison had only two
years of formal schooling, was totally deaf in one ear and was hard of
hearing in the other, was fired from his first job as a newsboy and
later fired from his job as a telegrapher; and still he became the most
famous inventor in the history of the U.S.
9. There is no such thing as failure.
Whenever
you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have
learned something that does not work. Always ask "What have I learned
about what doesn't work?", "Can this explain something that I didn't set
out to explain?", and "What have I discovered that I didn't set out to
discover?" Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a
mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.
10. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are.
Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have
no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret
them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you
are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. IBM observed that
no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to
mean there was no market. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs,
looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive
opportunity. Once Thomas Edison was approached by an assistant while
working on the filament for the light bulb. The assistant asked Edison
why he didn't give up. "After all," he said, "you have failed 5000
times." Edison looked at him and told him that he didn't understand what
the assistant meant by failure, because, Edison said, "I have
discovered 5000 things that don't work." You construct your own reality
by how you choose to interpret your experiences.
11. Always approach a problem on its own terms.
Do
not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased
toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from
multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a
perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at
the problem. Write the problem statement several times using different
words. Take another role, for example, how would someone else see it,
how would Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, George Patton see it? Draw a picture
of the problem, make a model, or mold a sculpture. Take a walk and look
for things that metaphorically represent the problem and force
connections between those things and the problem (How is a broken store
window like my communications problem with my students?) Ask your
friends and strangers how they see the problem. Ask a child. How would a
ten year old solve it? Ask a grandparent. Imagine you are the problem.
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at
change.
12. Learn to think unconventionally.
Creative
geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical,
analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all
information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to
eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which
mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are
dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and
connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke
different thinking patterns in their brain. These new patterns lead to
new connections which give them a different way to focus on the
information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on.
This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein
once famously remarked "Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while
imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to
know and understand."
And, finally, Creativity is paradoxical.
To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must
see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder,
must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates,
must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the
same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire
success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and
must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.
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