A Creative and Democratic Conversation Between The Left And Right....Side Of The Brain.

This week in our Design culture module we had our ‘Art of Creativity’ Workshop. We were located in the new University of Limerick Building located in the city centre. Our Product Design class was the lucky first group to use this new building. I think it was fantastic for the university to reintegrate within the city and especially for this module, as having a new space to be creative in can help improve our design flow and is a huge asset to any designer.

As a young designer, one common thing that can happen during projects is: that some days are harder to be creative than others. I look back at my past projects so far in university and realise it is easy to come up and develop an idea when you are inspired or ‘in the zone’, but sometimes there is a block. This workshop helped us refine our creativity skills by expanding our perception.

An exercise looking at limerick through a square hole cut in a piece of paper. A great exercise to expand our perception of things we would normally walk past.

I reflect to think about when am I ‘in the zone’ creatively, this leads me to think where and how do I get in the zone? I realise that while writing this, I have music playing out loud (Miles Davis’ Album, ‘Out of Blue’, for those who are curious) and a cup of black coffee beside me. Perhaps these are my two core ingredients to me creating my best creative environment. I often have music playing when trying to be creative, I often mix between genres. Mornings normally require loud and fast music, the Trainspotting soundtrack is a favourite. Evenings are for music without lyrics so it tends to be some sort of instrumental.

However, this only consists a small amount of what goes into creating the best environment. I realised from this workshop that what is argumentatively more important is the state of mind during this process. It is about ensuring that you are being your most creative. This means dropping the analytical side of your brain, forgetting perfection. You will achieve very little progress by being critical of early ideas and giving things a go.

This was examplified by a creativity exercise called 'Stupid Shit Nobody Needs' with the theme of food and drink we did in groups. Doing this we used negative brainstorming, thinking of all the bad outcomes and products within the chosen theme. Our final idea was a clear carton shaped container that held soggy biscuits drink that would resemble the consistency of a dunked biscuit.

It reminds me of a ‘School of Design Podcast’ I listened to very recently. The guest was Matt Knorr, a designer based in Seattle. (https://mattknorr.com/ ). His design and creativity method was to keep it simple. To just create and not worry about whether the idea will fail or not.

‘Putting stuff out there is the only way to improve’ – Matt Knorr

It reminds me of the famous creative saying ‘prepare to fail, as it is only through failure that we can improve.’ I would not fully agree with this saying in its literal sense, I would agree with what it hints at however:

I would say that during the design process that there are times, such as the beginning phase where we should turn our brain to creative mode: this means switching off perfection, harsh judgement, ruling things out before trying or exploring the idea further. Then during the refinement phase we can then turn our brain to an analytical mode, where we are aloud to question decisions, choices, ideas and propose new ones. For me this normally happens during my sleep, when I am on a walk in the local forest, or cutting the grass in the garden.

This is only one method of creativity but I do think it is one that suits me. It creates a democratic space for each side of the brain to talk and make their points, finally ending up with a well-considered idea at the end.