Hey, it’s Samina here (again). Now, I know FITC wrapped up this past Tuesday, but they do say ‘better late than never’ (whoever ‘they’ are, anyway).
I was pretty busy looking after things at the booth for the first two days of FITC, so I hadn’t had a chance to take in a lot of the festival in general. On Tuesday, however, I attended two presentations. The first of these was “There is no Box: How to Think Beyond the Edge,” presented by Jason Theodor, Creative Director for Critical Mass. He has spent the better part of five years thinking about how we come up with ideas, and how we should go about developing better ones. He started off by talking about the evolution of the term ‘creativity’ itself; initially, creation was something only God could do, but this idea changed over time. Now, there is no single definition of creativity.
Jason feels that there are three elements that make up creativity: Action, Connection and Deviation; to come up with ideas, one has to stray from one’s normal way of thinking, push the edges, and strive to just be more creative. The three elements work as follows:
Action
This is the “do” element, and the important thing to keep in mind is quantity, because it’s better to produce many flawed results than to agonize over generating one perfect solution. Along with producing many solutions, he suggests that we adopt a “capture-catalogue-review” system: we should capture, or record, our ideas, whether on paper, camera, or other means; we should catalogue, or organize, our ideas; and we should continually review those ideas, refining and purging as necessary.
Connection
This is the “glue,” about seeing the links between different things. It’s beneficial to the creative individual to know a little about everything so that they are able to form the right connections when the time opportunity presents itself. The quote “Discovery favours the prepared mind” comes to mind; I seem to think it was Sir Sanford Fleming who said that, but there’s a good chance that I’ve muddled up the quote, the speaker, or both. At any rate, the point still stands. I don’t think Theodor himself was quite crystal in explaining this point, but he did bring up the use of mind-mapping to form new connections–write down your root word in the center of a sheet of paper, and then move outward, forming new associations as you go.
Deviation
This element has to do with “skew,” or breaking boundaries. This is where the term “there is no box” comes into play. I think the general idea of this point was that we must not limit ourselves to what we believe to be standards; that means self-censorship is a definite no.
I’m not sure how many people can consciously sit down and adopt a system such as this one, however logical it seems. I do, however, feel that there were some good ideas to be gleaned from the presentation:
- - “10 ideas in 10 minutes” - force yourself to come up with ideas in volume by imposing a time limit. You’ll be surprised with what you come up with.
- - Get out all your ideas, including the bad ones (don’t self-censor).
- - Don’t wait for inspiration, just get ideas out.
- - There are no rules!
For anyone who would like to take a more in-depth look at Jason Theodor’s creative method, you can access his presentation slides here.
Following this presentation, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Source + Creativity.” The panel members included Marcos Chin (best known for his illustrations for LavaLife; he has essentially made a career of Adobe Illustrator), Shaun Hammontree of MK12, interactive installation artist Camille Utterback, Jared Ficklin of Frog Design, and Dr. Woohoo. The discussion was centred around where ideas are found, sources of inspiration, etc., but I must admit that I wasn’t as engaged as I should have been, and I think lack of sleep was a contributing factor. My apologies.
Apart from the two presentations, I took a little time to play Rock Band with two friends in the gaming room set up on one side of the convention hall. That was a new experience for me, and I can’t say I did admirably well, but on the other hand it was my first time playing. I’d definitely try it again. Anyhow, I’ll write later on about the FITC wrap-up, soon hopefully!
-Samina