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How To Be A Creative Sponge

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How To Be A Creative Sponge by Jon Hicks - Oct 2009 - see http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/how-to-be-a-creative-sponge-2 where the pdf is also avail for d/l

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HELLO!

x

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JON HICKS HICKSDESIGN

Good morning everyone! My name is Jon Hicks, one half of the imaginatively named Hicksdesign, a creative partnership based in Witney.We work on everything from print to web, but probably most well known for the Firefox and Thunderbird Logos.

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Text

Although these days I work as Lead Designer for Opera Software, working on Opera Mini and desktop

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HOW TO BE A

CREATIVE

SPONGE!

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How do you do it? How do you get the ideas to actually design something??"

“Mr F” from London

"

Well of course, there are many different ways that a design actually gets ‘done’, but today I’m here to look at just one.

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Designers need to be visual leeches, constantly cataloguing and recording information like a camera that’s always snapping photos"

Jason Santa Maria

"

As designers, we’re constantly looking for ideas. We can never switch off.

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It seems to me that if you're a designer, then design runs through your veins. You can't stop looking at things through your designer eyes. "

Ben Terrett, ‘The Design Disease’

"

"

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Visual Leeches ?

Creative Magpies

Visual Vampires

Creative Sponges

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CREATIVE JUICES!

mmmm!

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The 3 stages of the Creative Sponge

COLLECT!CATALOG!CREATE!

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COLLECTWhat do we collect and where from?

Collecting is the core activity of a Creative Sponge

What, how and where?

- What do we collect ?

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What are we collecting?

It’s not just ‘Inspiration’It’s not just ‘Ideas’It’s FUEL

All this visual collateral is nothing without a catalyst to kickstart the creative process.

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Things I’ve collected always have relevance at some point later on"

Georgie Bean, Interior Stylist

"

The temptation is to only collect the things that interest you, but this is will hold you back.

Collect even the things you don’t like.

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Sources to collect from...

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observing life©Khoi Vinh

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Doodles from your headDoodles and sketches

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Book Covers

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Magazine layouts

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Found Typography

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Images taken directly from the internet

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Related: comic | cute | decorative | funny

Related: comic | cute | inline | outline | sassy | shadow

Let the creative juices come to you - for free. Sign up on Type Foundries mailing lists, and they will send you regular doses without you having to lift a finger

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T-shirt companies like Threadless

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Packaging

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clothing labels and tagsHow about more obscure items like clothing labels?

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Leaflet racks are an all-you-can-eat buffet

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Experiment with your camera

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ExperimentationTry taking pictures through glass

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...OK, you get the idea...

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...except websites!

That is, everything except the thing you’re working on. Avoid sub-conscious duplication

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CATALOGWhat is your ‘trusted system’?

Just like ‘GTD’, the creative sponge needs their own trusted system.

You can actually have more than one system!

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Designers are magpie-like creatures. If we see a style or approach that we enjoy we’ll absorb some of it, sometimes consciously, sometimes not"

Michael Johnson, Johnson Banks

"

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YOURHEAD!Your head is the first place you store stuff

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Analog Spongery

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SketchbookSimon Collison keeps beautiful sketchbooks

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The blog “Print & Pattern” keeps meticulous ring binders full of the resources she finds.

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…or a boxI just bung things in a box

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Digital Spongery

Your maybe more likely to use digital spongery

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I used to use iPhoto a lot.

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But now there are special apps like Littlesnapper

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Personally, I’m using Evernote the most at the moment

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Sources

Collectors

Cameraphones are one of the best collectors! Material is collected by, and synced between, desktop and mobile client.

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I can often remember text in an image, which is quicker to find than tagging images

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Social Spongery

Designers collections need not be shut away in sketchbooks and boxes, but can be collected, tagged and sorted, ready for everyone’s use. I love this kind of open source design collecting.

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FFFFound!

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IMG Spark

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Ember

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Flickr is still king

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‘No interpretative dancing with explosives please’

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CREATEHow do we use these collections to create stuff?

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Modern Art is rife with collections turned into new work.

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Eduardo Paolazzi and Peter Blake are just 2 examples of artists who collect things and apply them directly to create new art.

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The Fear !

How do get past the blank sheet of paper?

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Collecting things stimulates

the brain. It helps you think of

something fresher. "Wieden + Kennedy

"

Collection itself is a stimulant for ideas

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The Fear !

But sometimes not enough

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It needs a further catalyst

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CREATIVE CATALYSTS

• Deadlines!• Change of environment • Go to Bed• Peace & Quiet (go for a wee)• Take a shower

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Mind-mapping

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Cheese is an excellent catalyst of course

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Critique it!

But lets look at examples of catalysts that directly use our collections.

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Original 2012 bid logo

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Final 2012 logo

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But are these really any better? Why?

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Moodboards

But lets look at examples of catalysts that directly use our collections.

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I can has moodboard?

kthxbye!

Moodboards have a bad rep, mainly because of this man

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A MoodboardThis is where your collections of design collateral really pays off. Once assembled, common colours, styles and type emerge, such as the reds and royal blues here

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Another MoodboardHowever, ask someone else, and you could get a completely different feel / outlook - green and blue

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Why Moodboards?

1. Concentrates on the concept/mood

2. Stimulates conversation with stakeholders

3. Quick to make4.Clients can make their own!

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Spot Design Patterns

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Reuse, recycle, but don’t

reinvent the wheel unless

necessary”Brian Christiansen, UI Engineering

Design is not always about originality

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Anyone that subscribes to Chris Messina’s Flickr Stream will know that he likes posting screenshots. A LOT of screenshots. It’s hard to know why, until you take a step back and see the bigger picture.

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It’s a collection of design patterns

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Pattern Tap is an excellent resource for patterns

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Sampling colours

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Finally, a couple of my own examples...

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Hicksdesign logo

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From a painting seen in an art gallery, and a button configuration on a camera, to logo

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open doors student site

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From Threadless T Shirt to Website.

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Soak up everything, you

never know when you're

going to need it"Jon Hicks

"