how to be a creative sponge

HELLO!

x

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.

Text

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

HOW TO BE A

CREATIVE

SPONGE!

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.

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.

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’

"

"

Visual Leeches ?

Creative Magpies

Visual Vampires

Creative Sponges

CREATIVE JUICES!

mmmm!

The 3 stages of the Creative Sponge

COLLECT!CATALOG!CREATE!

COLLECTWhat do we collect and where from?

Collecting is the core activity of a Creative Sponge

What, how and where?

- What do we collect ?

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.

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.

Sources to collect from...

observing life©Khoi Vinh

Doodles from your headDoodles and sketches

Book Covers

Magazine layouts

Found Typography

Images taken directly from the internet

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

T-shirt companies like Threadless

Packaging

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

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

Experiment with your camera

ExperimentationTry taking pictures through glass

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

...except websites!

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

CATALOGWhat is your ‘trusted system’?

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

You can actually have more than one system!

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

"

YOURHEAD!Your head is the first place you store stuff

Analog Spongery

SketchbookSimon Collison keeps beautiful sketchbooks

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

…or a boxI just bung things in a box

Digital Spongery

Your maybe more likely to use digital spongery

I used to use iPhoto a lot.

But now there are special apps like Littlesnapper

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

Sources

Collectors

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

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

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.

FFFFound!

IMG Spark

Ember

Flickr is still king

‘No interpretative dancing with explosives please’

CREATEHow do we use these collections to create stuff?

Modern Art is rife with collections turned into new work.

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

The Fear !

How do get past the blank sheet of paper?

Collecting things stimulates

the brain. It helps you think of

something fresher. "Wieden + Kennedy

"

Collection itself is a stimulant for ideas

The Fear !

But sometimes not enough

It needs a further catalyst

CREATIVE CATALYSTS

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

Mind-mapping

Cheese is an excellent catalyst of course

Critique it!

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

Original 2012 bid logo

Final 2012 logo

But are these really any better? Why?

Moodboards

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

I can has moodboard?

kthxbye!

Moodboards have a bad rep, mainly because of this man

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

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

Why Moodboards?

1. Concentrates on the concept/mood

2. Stimulates conversation with stakeholders

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

Spot Design Patterns

Reuse, recycle, but don’t

reinvent the wheel unless

necessary”Brian Christiansen, UI Engineering

“

Design is not always about originality

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.

It’s a collection of design patterns

Pattern Tap is an excellent resource for patterns

Sampling colours

=

=

Finally, a couple of my own examples...

Hicksdesign logo

=+

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

open doors student site

=

From Threadless T Shirt to Website.

Soak up everything, you

never know when you're

going to need it"Jon Hicks

"

http://delicious.com/jonhicks/sponge

SOAK IT UP!

http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/be-a-creative-sponge-2