Mila Jaroniec on “How To Kill Your Creativity”
Satirical wisdom on our creative tendencies. A must read post on How to Kill Your Creativity by Mila Jaroniec.
A Short Lesson On Perspective with Linds Redding
An eye-opening reminder to those of us who create for a living: be sure what you do truly matters.
Click here or the title of this blog to be taken to the article after reading the bio of Linds Redding below.
British born, Linds Redding graduated with a degree in Graphic Design, and launched straight into a career in advertising having been told by a fellow student it was a guaranteed way of getting fabulously wealthy very young. Twenty five years later, he hunted down the person responsible and killed him with a baseball bat and buried the body in the woods.
Linds worked as an Art Director for several agencies in London and Edinburgh, before emigrating to New Zealand with his family in the mid nineties. He worked for most of NZ’s top creative agencies, Saatchi, DDB, Colenso and The Campaign Palace before leaving agency life at the millennium to pursue his interests in Motion Graphics and animation. For the past ten years, Linds has run a successful animation studio designing and producing TVC’s for tne New Zealand advertising industry.
In late 2011, at 51 Linds was diagnosed with inoperable Eosophigal Cancer. He has since given up work and spends his time at home on Waiheke Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf walking, writing, drawing and making music. He blogs on the tricky business of living and dying at lindsredding.com.
Erik Spiekermann on Typographic Design in the Digital Domain
People like Eric Spiekermann have played a huge part in what this [type] design industry is today. Interviewer Elliot Jay Stocks asked great questions which really surfaced Spiekermann’s unquenchable passion for progress, innovation, and critical creative decision making, which is something we can all benefit from. It gets me excited to hear the zeal in his voice about older mediums being brought back to life with a fresh perspective and into new mediums of communication.
Embracing constraints is necessary in our industry to affirm for us what we don’t need to be doing. Even in the simple things of type size or paper dimensions, these things help guide you to your solution. They eliminate the unnecessary options. Yet everyday it seems designers fret over feeling limited in their projects, or constrained in their options, but this is where true creativity surfaces. Amidst the limitations, we cannot just do, but we have to think creatively.
When constraints are acknowledged and embraced, true creativity can begin.
Never Stop Making
You cut to the core of me Jake Nickell. I don’t do this enough. Even my typing this right now instead of doing what he’s talking about is one more example of the lack of excuse that I have for not creating for the sake of creating more. I could be learning so much more by accident if I were creating just to create. It would be good. I doodle, but that’s about it. I can think of more I could do, but thinking about doing it and not doing it is the same as not doing it. So what the crap, right?
So where should I start? what should I create first? Does this writing entry count as creation even though it’s not technically creating? I’ve given thought to doing the “create something new everyday” goal, but honestly I’ve not committed to it for the fear of not doing it everyday (this sentence could also be read “I’m pathetic”, but I’ll let you choose your own adventure on that one).
What to do, what to do.
We Have Limited Our Dreams
I heard a quote that really made me think today. It made me sad to hear it, but at the exact same time I was so excited to hear it. The exciting part is that identifying the problem is the first step to solving it. Right? Here’s the quote:
Our capacity to dream is limited by our capacity to produce.
— Joel Thomas
Mind explode. It was like he was talking to me saying, “Hey, this is why your ideas aren’t very good.” I felt like I couldn’t scribble it down fast enough, because I didn’t want to forget it. I am my greatest limitation. My inability to understand what is possible, limits my ability to be creative.
For me this mainfests itself in countless ways, but some of the ones that hit home most are: knowing what my colleauges are capable of, knowing what kind of time certain things take, knowing my software adequately to know what is possible, and constantly saturating my brain with what is being done out there. How can I know everything? Well, I can’t. The more I try to know, the more I realize I don’t know. I often wish that our brains were like in The Matrix when they could just upload a program of knowledge into their brains and boom that’s all it took to learn. Man wouldn’t that be sweet. But that’s not how it works. In fact it’s just the opposite.
If you aren’t constantly making effort to learn you will lose it. Even to maintain the knowledge you have takes effort else you will lose it. And yet we are expected to take everything we know, and everytime create something new. No pressure.
We limit our dreams to what is achievable by us as individuals. Yet look at what has been accomplished by men and women who dared to look beyond a safe attainable goal that they could accomplish. One person could not have built the Disney Empire, or Microsoft, or Apple, or Pixar, or whatever your favorite thing is. It’s built through collaboration. It’s buit upon the ability to see what could be done, not upon what I can do.
You see, we all face the same resistance. We all hear the stupid voice in our head telling us it can’t be done, it’s stupid, it’s impossible, it’s too expensive, no one will like it, blah blah, and so on. Yet our society is inspired by those who have dared to go beyond that wall of resistance because doing any less would be the only thing worse than doing nothing at all.
I can’t have all the best ideas, but I have some. I may never invent anything that’ll change the world, but perhaps I could. I can’t do this alone, not just me, God does this first in me, and then through me. He has huge plans beyond what I can even imagine, and all I have to do is listen to his plans, and carry them out. It’s not a light switch, it requires a lot of effort, and discipline, but with those two things a lot can be done.
I want to do things that are beyond my ability, because anything less than that I have unintentionally limited. God show me what you have, teach me how to listen, show me when it’s you, and show how to not make it me. I need your wisdom and creativity. I am dependent on you in everything because you are able. Depending on only me instead limits you.
