Free Idea Factory

Of what use is it to apply the same thinking to creative problems all of the time?

Think of a creative problem you have been trying to solve for a while. Write it out and formalize a strategy. Then allow a friend, colleague, or someone you respect with knowledge about the subject to interpret the problem for themselves. Don’t tell them what your plan of attack was. Then, with their permission of course, implement their strategy instead of yours, despite your initial feelings about it.

Operating in unfamiliar territory can certainly be uncomfortable, but it can also produce great results in terms of creative development. And collaborating and dialogging with creatively oriented people and groups can certainly open you up to a whole new world of possibilities.

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
- Albert Einstein

various textures and colours and words for colours pop up on the screen of a website

you write something based on what you see, what it makes you think of, feel, smell, taste….

especially handy for synaesthetes.

great colour sites:

Pigments Through the Ages

The Colour Experience

Colour Terms from the Phrontistery, a thinking place

note that i am excited and interested in colour and would love to share and exchange ideas, links and references related to colour, creativity and inspiration.

to be done by a group or alone or with imaginary friends, if you desire

take your cameras out into the wild and look for as many instances of the alphabet in nature as you can find. you can decide whether you want to include artificial examples, such as letters found on signs and billboards or just natural ones.

for example check out the minimalist concrete poetry of mIEKAL aND, a look at rock formations and caves, the physical substance of language

Get a box of chalk and travel to an area with a lot of pavement and sidewalks. Use the chalk to alter the naturally occurring cracks in the pavement. The fact that the weather will destroy your work can free you from worrying about archival materials and formality. The novel environment enables you to be open to new processes and perhaps increased creativity.

Variations:
-Figurative images
-Abstract images
-Straight lines, curved lines, contiguous lines, broken lines, etc.
-Incorporate text

Leaving the environment you are comfortable in creates a sense of disequilibrium and opens you up to learning new things, see Outdoor Leadership: Theory and Practice By Bruce Martin, Christine Cashel, Mark Wagstaff, Mary Breunig