Monthly Archives: June 2015

Change Your Scene

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Image by Keith Chapman

Image by Keith Chapman

One incredibly easy and simple way to spark creativity is to change your scene. Change your surroundings. Where do you do your creative work? In an office? In a room? At a coffee shop? Take a look at where you are most productive and take a look at what is around you. If you are blocked, go elsewhere even just for one small creative session. When I was writing my first novel, I hit a major lull. Until that time, I went to write at a bar and grill type restaurant over lunches that granted me free wi-fi access. Then I hit a wall. I was lost in the book. I didn’t remember how I got into the weeds but in the weeds I sat staring at a blinking cursor.
Finally, I closed the laptop, gobbled down my food, and left. I went to a local coffee shop, ordered an afternoon coffee and sat down for just another 15 minutes and opened the laptop on a whim. Nope. Blinking cursor sucking my creative synapses right out from under me. Then, totally out of the blue, two well-dressed business ladies sitting near me had a conversation that I could not prevent from overhearing. One lady was complaining how their meetings were so unproductive because people felt the need to talk to fill the air. She went on to say if a meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes and it only needs to take 10 minutes, then be a doll and give the time back to your people. Oddly, this resonated in more ways than one. It well stood true in my own experiences with corporate life but deeper than that was the nudge I needed on my book. I was hung up on  making the dialog of my parody go through this entirely boring scene line by line. I ditched the whole section and summed up the many, many paragraphs by replacing it all with a simple, snide commentary. It shortened the chapter significantly, became more direct, and most importantly removed the logjam. This would not have happened as easily as it had if I had not relocated. Changing it up gives you a chance for newness. This means the muse in each of us gets new input which in turn can result in different outputs. If nothing else, it keeps you moving.

Constraints Unlock Creativity

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Image by Keith Chapman.

Image by Keith Chapman.

Contrary to basic intuition, complete freedom of design can greatly hinder creative design. Think of it this way. In your personal life, outside of your business or job, you can pretty much design or write whatever you want, at any time (non-competes withstanding). Total freedom of design. No constraints. Every possible idea is out there. Sit down with your sketchbook, your blinking cursor, or your canvas with nothing in mind. Now draw, write, or paint a masterpiece immediately. It’s difficult. You may end up with a doodle, an averagely boring sentence, or a blob of paint at best. Well, if this happens, then I guess you have indeed started something – a scribble, a theme, or a background but not very inspiring. Worst case, you remain staring at a blank page, screen, or canvas.

However, if you apply constraints within a scope of even a loosely defined project, you get a start, an inkling, or a basic concept no matter how primitive. The nice thing is that almost every project you get assigned or assign yourself will have built in constraints by the very definition of the project having some scope.

Now here is the catch. I strongly believe that the stronger the constraints, the more creative the result. Hear me out. This is counter-intuitive. A very loosely defined project scope leaves a large world of flexibility and ideas out there as candidates for the one result needed. Sifting through those ideas, heck, even generating those ideas is a daunting task and chances of you stumbling on a flash of brilliance is slim at best. Tighten the parameters on a design or scope and you limit the ideas and develop guardrails for your thoughts. This means focus. This means directed thoughts, condensed energy brought to a smaller concept which in turns mean that creative energy is no longer dispersed across a vast landscape of infinite possibility but driven towards a defined purpose.

Ideas are like a gas and the concept or project scope is the vessel containing that gas. Put those ideas into a very large vessel and you get very little pressure on the concept, little interaction, nothing noticeable. Make that concept a very small vessel and you get high energy interactions creating a very noticeable pressure. Perhaps you can make the vessel too small and leave no room for the gas at all… a vacuum… no room for ideas but that more or less defeats the purpose. That means the concept or project is complete and requires no creativity at all in the first place.

Here, try it for yourself. Whatever your art is… draw an equivalent. Draw, write, sculpt, design the following and see how your creativity increases with constraints. I’ll choose drawing for this example.

1. Draw a dog in a scene.

2. Draw a Dalmatian at a fire house.

3. Draw an older, aging Dalmatian named Buster at a frantic brick fire house in Queens, NY as the alarm bells are ringing loudly at 2AM.

I hope you find the level of detail in your drawings goes up as you consider each of the above project scopes or better the style of your drawings changed dramatically. This is usually where the nay-sayers come in and say “you’ve removed all creativity by defining so much”. Possibly, from one perspective in the sense of raw art, maybe. Maybe. But consider this. I did not specify what style, colors, materials to draw on or with, or many other important artistic parameters. You can certainly create a wonderfully creative work in the first and second project scopes but magic happens at the third and it is often quicker to arrive. Greatness is attracted to a well defined project. Also, consider that in most areas of creativity, we are trying to bring in some commercial value one way or another so arriving at the “one” early in the process has huge benefits.

So, do yourself a favor and next time you are assigned a project or you assign yourself a creative project, demand that as much detail as possible be defined before you start to create. Give yourself some sacred cows and golden handcuffs. Limit your parameters deeply and see what emerges quickly.

And one final tip. In my personal career, I have found great innovation, ideas and design emerge freely when I fictitiously add constraints to my project when I don’t get enough definition. You will know you do not have enough definition when you find yourself staring into space or that blank page for too long. Add your own constraints. For example, if you are designing a washing machine. Set a design goal whereby you cannot use any screws in the design. Now start the design. That constraint is unrealistic (most likely) but keeping your energy within that guardrail will prove to demonstrate amazing results. You rethink the norm. You force your energy into new areas and something you could never have thought of any other way surfaces immediately. Hold true to your constraints until that idea emerges. If it doesn’t add more constraints. The washing machine cannot use any metal material. No screws. No metal. Yikes… but these constraints free previously held energy. Now an idea emerges that has no screws and no metal. You redesigned something and it could actually be revolutionary. Now that you have that, release the constraints and get to the commercial, manufacturable and marketable design but with that one nugget of an idea to make the entire product revolutionary. It works. Try it and provide some feedback! I would love to hear if this helps you in your mission.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative

Journal Your Way Out of a Mess

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Image by Keith Chapman.

Image by Keith Chapman.

Word of advice: If you do anything creative (and that should be everyone) be sure to stock up on journals. A journal can be a nice Moleskine, a Baron Fig, a composition book, a giant sketch book, a stack of scrap papers stapled together, within an app on your phone, Evernote, or a pile of multi-colored Post-it notes. It really doesn’t matter. In fact, I use several of the above simultaneously, usually for different purposes.

If you are having a creative block, a nasty problem in front of you to solve, or feeling invincibly creative, you will benefit greatly by logging ideas (even the prematurely self-judged bad ones), complaints, problems, solutions, research, doodles, and random facts, quotes and general goofiness. Even if it seems absurd, stupid, ridiculous, impossible, or embarrassing write it down anyway. If nothing else you will make room for better ideas by purging the “bad ones” onto paper.

I really recommend a bound paper journal with a nice, easy writing pen that feels good in your hand, writes smoothly, and encourages you to keep using it. I use journals at my job and have for decades as an engineer and designer. Looking back, I’ve had some crazy ideas but some have turned into products and popular products at that. Seeing the incubation of ideas on paper turned eventually to product is one of the most satisfying things I’ve experienced. I recently took to journals for my hobbies, side projects and art as well. It has made those hobbies and art much more fulfilling. In fact, I wrote my first novel, Sushi Wars: A New Roll, entirely in Evernote because it kept distractions to a minimum and I was able to create notes immediately from my web research and story issues.

The benefits of writing journals are numerous but there are, admittedly, a few challenges that creep up. There is the dreaded false start. You buy a nice journal or you simply get a pad of paper and… fail to start writing in it. It sits there staring at you pristine, unopened, clean, blank, and perfectly smug. Do yourself a favor and bust through the seal and dirty that first page immediately. Write anything. It doesn’t matter. Just dirty it.

Another challenge seems to be continuity. You dirty that first page (and maybe that was easy for you) and you’re writing in it for a few days, maybe even a few days in a row and then life creeps in and you skip a day or two or twenty. Now you have a well-intentioned journal with only 3 dirtied pages. Pick up where you left off even if the entry is “I have no idea where I left off.” and go forward.

I use journals for product design complete with bad sketches and barely legible writings all in pen. I list research topics I want to get to and benign to-dos and action items from meetings, the more utilitarian side of journals. Where my journals really shine though is in solving seemingly unsolvable problems or combating dead ends (i-dea-d ends?!?!) and fighting through the monotony of the same old ideas rising to front of mind. I sometime doodle to music to free things up. Let your mind wander with pen in hand and you will quickly stumble onto ideas so good that you won’t understand how they actually got embedded in you in the first place.

My process includes writing about the problem or goal first and scoping out the issues completely either by drawings or words or a combination of media. Then, I typically doodle in the margins around the issue using symbols or pictures associated with the problem or goal. I find this drives the issue into a deeper level of understanding and likely stirs some subconscious fires and redirects thoughts and energy at the issue. Then I start listing actions I can take to step towards the goal or solution even if ever so slightly. It may simply start with “I have no ideas. I’ll have to research the term _____ on google just to get started.” I will keep listing actions I can take until I run way deep into crazy land and keep going until I’ve exhausted the crazy in me. Next, I look at the list and the doodles and I pick the best of them, even if they set camp up firmly in crazy land. I refine those few select ideas and concepts and iterate on them. I equate this process much like sanding a piece of wood. Take the rough edges away a little at a time and eventually you will get a shape that starts making sense. I keep repeating this process until I land on a fully actionable idea that is doable, makes sense, and strikes me as novel, innovative, or, at the very least, mildly impressive. If I haven’t been able to get there yet, I keep sanding. Some ideas take weeks, months, even years because i shelved them. But here is the important thing. I shelved them in a journal that can be picked up later, years later, and revisited. Then I find myself in a different place with new experiences and can quite possibly find a solution, iteration, or creative element from the original problem or goal that I can use.

Just keep writing, sketching, doodling in many, many journals with your ideas, concepts, and get your crazy on paper. Go nonlinear, go stupid, go without rules and see what happens. You’ll feel quite creative and hopefully feel much happier. I always do.

Now go. Create.  ~ The Mission Creative

Brainstorm like a Boss, not like your boss

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Image by Rebecca Bloom Photography. http://www.bloomphoto.com

Image by Rebecca Bloom Photography. http://www.bloomphoto.com

How many times have you been told “we’ll have to brainstorm some ideas” or you are invited to a “brainstorm session” and first rolled your eyes, maybe actually suspended disbelief, and attended only to realize the brainstorm was really a meeting to listen to the boss’ ideas? Smile, nod, accept… move on. <sigh>

Or… perhaps you are in a healthier environment that is open to ideas and your organization can actually perform a brainstorm session that results in some new ideas. Is the quality of those ideas enough to engage resources on right away? Do you have a plan that will result in a creative or innovative result? Often not.

Here are some basic tenets and ideas on how to run an effective brainstorm session based on my years of design and research and development experience. This has worked well in my experience.

1. Keep the group small. A group under 6 people is ideal. Avoid closed minded people, distant stakeholders, and pessimistic people. If they want to attend they need to change some attitudes or get involved in more detail. Refuse to design by committee. It doesn’t work. Polarize! It is ok to have lovers and haters. Both will talk about your project.

2. Know what the goal is. Too many brainstorms have no goal, deliverable, or target in mind. The facilitators try to keep it “open ended” which translates to “delays” in the business world. Have a definitive goal defined at the start, like “We need to design a product that cuts the lawn shorter with little to no effort that is easy to clean and control.” Built into this statement is a goal with clear criteria outlined in an open enough way to provide leeway of new ideas. It doesn’t say a lawnmower but a product that cuts the lawn shorter – a subtle but important differentiation. If I say we need a lawnmower, you get an image in your head that is very much like what is out there already. However, if I say we need a product that cuts the lawn shorter, this opens the thinking process and may inherently question the norm because as long as the criteria of the lawn being shorter is obtained, the idea can be considered at this stage.

3. Actually facilitate with rules. Start the meeting with ground rules clearly explained to the group and hold them and yourself accountable to those rules. Suggestions include: Do not talk over one another. Do not criticize, challenge, judge, or nay-say any ideas until the idea creation time is completely exhausted. Know the difference between a complete idea and a component idea – both are welcomed. List and record all ideas. Ensure everyone on the team has multiple chances to talk and present ideas. Set a time limit for the session and stick to it.

4. Review all ideas and compare to all criteria. Identify the top 3 to 10 ideas that meet or come close to meeting the criteria of the goal or target regardless of how extreme it may seem at this stage. Revisit the criteria and consider modification of the criteria to improve results. Finally, compare final ideas to final criteria and determine which ideas are worth pursuing.

5. Create an action plan off of the results. Narrow the ideas down to the top 3 that satisfy or come closest to satisfying the final criteria. Create a plan to go execute each of the 3 ideas if they seem feasible to try. Otherwise, refine by having a secondary brainstorm session on each of the 3 main resulting ideas individually, refine the criteria of the goal with another layer of detail, and move closer to satisfying the criteria by brainstorming another level of detail on each of the main ideas.

6. Decide which idea is the best candidate to obtain the goal. The analysis might include cost estimates in resources, time, and money. It might include an evaluation of feasibility, availability, technology, and other component needs to accomplish the goal. One idea may be better than another in satisfying criteria but perhaps is too costly to develop. Compromises start at this level. The goals must prevail.

7. Make a decision. At the end of the brainstorm phase of a project, be sure to walk away with a clean decision, an action plan for the team with assignments, and buy-in from the creators. How creators feel about their creations often shape the outcome of the creations. In most cases, it is better to make a decision and pursue execution of the idea at this point than to sit in limbo with no clear direction. You can always change direction later or improve the project in a second phase or offering.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative

Creativity Jump Start in 3 Steps

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Original Digital Art by Keith Chapman.

Original Digital Art by Keith Chapman.

When facing a blank page, a blank canvas or simply… a blank and you need to produce something… anything… at this point, try the following “simple” exercise. It’s like a shot of caffeine to the creative brain.

1. Think of an object that is for sale in a store that you shop at frequently. Write the first object you thought of down on a page of paper.

2. Think of an adjective that begins with the first letter of the object you wrote down. Take the very first one you thought of and write that adjective down on the same page as the object.

3. Below the object and adjective, write 10 connections between the adjective and the object without repeating notions. After a few, it should get crazy hard. That’s what you want. Persevere! By the 4th or 5th connection, you should be in crazy land but get 10 and you expanded beyond normal thought. Now… admire your oddities and hit that blank page, blank canvas, or that… blank… and create something spectacular.

As an example, here is one I just did:

Object: Tennis racquet, Adjective: tight

Connections:

1. The strings on my tennis racquet are tight.

2. My muscles are tight after using my tennis racquet.

3. The shot I made with my tennis racquet was tight up against the base line.

4. My grip on my tennis racquet was tight.

5. The grip tape was wrapped tight around the handle of my tennis racquet.

6. When I looked through my tennis racquet I framed the view of my opponent in a tight oval.

7. I rolled the handle of my tennis racquet in my shirt which made my shirt tight on my chest.

8. When I removed the strings from my tennis racquet, the frame was a tight fit over my head.

9. I strum my tennis racquet like a guitar because the strings seem as tight as guitar strings and the handle is like a guitar neck.

10. I bought a cheaper tennis racquet because money was tight.

Whew. That was not easy but that is the whole point. There will likely be obvious connections between the object and the adjective because your mind defaults to a connection to think of the adjective off of the initial object. However, after exhausting a few connections, you start looking for alternate meanings of words and alternate situations to put those words to use. I hope you find this exercise useful.

Now go. Create.  ~ The Mission Creative