Open your eyes
A few days ago, we had our second contemporary design culture lecture. This lectures main purpose was to ask us what creativity was and what it means to us as individuals. Discussions took place allowing us to express or opinions and how each of us got into a creative mindset, switching from the functional right left side of our brains to the more creative right side. I never thought much about getting into a creative mind set before now, I usually just put my productivity levels down to being either a good day or bad day and thought no more about it. Now of course I realise there’s so much more to it, so many things that can inspire you to be more creative and the first mistake that’s often made is starting with a blank sheet. From past experiences, I find this method one of the most difficult ways to generate ideas whether it be for design or even writing as it’s hard to come up with something from scratch with no source although not impossible but still very difficult. You might think that it’s so much effort to find inspiration and might even cause confusion as to where to look and it may not be the answer you want but there’s no right and wrong answer. You can travel to different places, see new things meet new people and see how they live and broaden your view and if time is not on your side, my preferred method is to use Pinterest and gather images that incorporate interesting forms, colour and sometimes mechanics. As regards to where I go to get my creative juices flowing, that cannot be answered with the name of a place, being a college student I work both here and at home, both being two very different places. My home place is based in the country side of Wexford, close to a couple of towns but in the country nonetheless and as you know during the educational year I spend a lot of time in limerick which is completely different for me but still both are places in which I can become creative and get inspired in different ways. When I’m working, I like to have a few things lying around my work area, I happen to be a low-key hoarder so I’m never short of random items. I find that this allows for a sense of quick thinking ad randomness as none of the items tend to have any relation with each other.
During the class, we were given a few tasks to do to show us different methods that can help inspire creativity. The first of these was to walk around the university with a sheet of paper with a square inch hole cut out of it. This hole was used to look through so we could focus on objects and block out everything else in the hope to be inspired. This method turned out to be very interesting as I found I could concentrate on smaller details rather than a big picture. The other method we tried was writing and sketching things we saw and noises we heard down onto a sheet of paper rolled up into a scroll and the story continued up the scroll as the journey went on. I found this to be a very interesting technique as it forces one to be more vigilant and aware of their surroundings and could be a useful tool when combined with different methods. All in all I found this lecture to be very interesting and found it very insightful into the nature of creativity
