Are we limited/controlled?

[zumojuice]

I was thinking on the issue of where inspiration comes from and, if given a set of visual cues, would we creative visual types come to the same response?

For those of you who have seen Derren Brown at work, he tried this with some advertising types with the result and being able to predict their outcome to creative problem based on what they'd be shown.

This led me to consider if we set a design competition for this forum to create a poster. Perhaps with complete free reign and no type/colour/style restrictions.

How many people who choose helvetica because it sounds like estetica? and how many now wouldn't pick it because I've said that?

An interesting point of conversation as to how you feel inspiration and ideas come from for you.

[Miss Leona]

I always get inspired ready magazines, I shouldn't really because a type of magazine is designed and style for a certain person rather than a design that should appeal to all but even if it's not aimed at me I can still take something from it

[zumojuice]

well i think inspiration can come from anywhere. Looking at graphic design gives you some ideas and a way to do them, but inspiration could come from anywhere. I question design magazines in general and awards even more.

[tommylogic]

generally, it's been my experience that people are sheep. That's why marketing and propaganda work so well.

[Pignut]

I think that Derren Brown is a great showman and is very good at what he does. That particular stunt took a lot of setting up and many elaborate visual/auditory cues to get them to "design" the poster he wanted them to.

(We were also seeing the edited TV show outcome, not the outtakes where things might not have gone so spectacularly well.)

Even so, I think that it is the business of a designer to be aware of and able to step back from the obvious cliches, even is it is only to make ourselves aware that we are using them to reinforce a message/idea.

I'm very inexperienced but I have already found that it's the most open design briefs that cause me the most trouble! The luxury of having free reign is nice, but I find that it's the restrictions and constraints that can often trigger some interesting ideas.

We did some great stuff at college about ideas and inspiration and the lecturer was very keen to demonstrate that creativity was a skill that could be taught, like any other. The techniques we learned were designed to help us take a step back from the obvious and trying to "short circuit" the hard-wired associations in our brain. During the ideas generation phase of assignments, being more "playful" with ideas was another central theme. Childlike and imaginative behaviour was encouraged over the judgemental and logical.

All much easier said than done, but very interesting!

[zumojuice]

Yeah. College and Uni is not about skills so much - it's about learning how to learn and take you mindset to new ways of thinking.

I think creativity is not something so much as taught as unlocked and used. It is as much as skill as logic, or perception. Some people are naturally talented with it and others are not. It can be homed however. But just like logic reasoning, or language, some people are more gifted creatively.

The great benefit of college is the uninhibited ideas, allowed to be bounced off each other and develop. Which leads onto another aspect of the learning experience and creative process. If i start with an idea on my own, it can be strong. But could be idea be stronger, if I added the aspects and influences to bounce the ideas around and develope them? I'd say yes

[Pignut]

I agree that an idea generally gets stronger when discussed with others, with the proviso that the others are people who's opinions you value!

The trouble is that an unsympathetic or cynical listener can easily crush or destroy a promising idea. That's where personal relationships, organisational hierarchies, mind games etc. can distort the outcome of such discussions.

What I have found (and it's odd how this works) is that even the act of discussing an idea with another designer will trigger off a load of other ideas, even if they're almost silent during the process.
I find that there's something in the act of trying to explain a piece of work that can suddenly clarify what's working and what's not. I think that's why I struggle to design at home, on my own. Working in a vacuum, I lose both objectivity and confidence in my ideas which makes it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

(And I seem to have a lot of chaff on my hands at the moment!)

[zumojuice]

I know the feeling. Often when discussing your idea, you're making a first effort to compact it and clarify it, so that it can be understood. If you're idea is flawed, then this can crop up here. And as you say, more ideas come from it, because its placing the ideas in words and concepts that might not be in your head.

The one large lesson to learn is that you can not redesign the world, and its on of the hardest I've had to learn. My last boss claimed to be into creativity and new ideas, but simply was happy to churn out the same old stuff with minor tweeks, under the proviso that 'the client would never go for it'. In essence, while this was true some of the time, the rest was simply his closed mind to anything new.

[maria_sta]

I prefer to think of it as ‘being guided’ towards what the client wants (that is what they think they want…)
Once you start feeling like you are being ‘controlled’ you either react by producing great ideas but not quiet suitable for the project or very poor and dry graphics… I have not decided which one is worse yet…
What is however annoying is being limited to their imagination – everyone knows what they want (99% unimaginative) or have seen something somewhere they want you to copy!
There is very little ‘room’ for genuine creativity to develop and that takes out all the fun and ‘good feeling’ of being a designer.

[zumojuice]

Well thats why there is so much design press and own projects. Few designers get away with free or very open briefs. We admire those that do. Fact is, if you don't push the boundaries of the client relationship from the start (cleverly suggesting but not forcing), they get into their mind you're a safe designer and you'll get stuck in that category. Even when clients are shown good design you've done, they can like it alot, but will still not let you shape their project in the same way.