This first week of classes has been the most laid back yet, but knowing me, I will wake up Monday morning with two papers, a project, four group assignments and a midterm all overdue. For example, I'm starting this blog post an hour before it's due and I have next to no ideas about what to write, so I'll just summarize the class that I think will likely be the most interesting class to me: Public Relations Publications.
Towards the end of the day on the first day we were told to watchInside Outbefore the next class, so of course I already like this class.
What I should've expected is that watching the movie was going to lead to a whole lesson about content creation and the creative process.
The process starts with empathizing with your product and/or client in order to understand what position the client wants to take and how it might best be framed. This can be achieved by making observations and trying to understand the thoughts that are surrounding the project. Which will naturally lead to defining what the purpose and goal of the project is. It's perfectly natural to flow between these two stages until there is a nice set of ideas that are rattling around.
Allow the natural flow of ideas to begin and decisions on different methods of how to get things done and how things will look will start appearing . As these ideas are popping across the page, it makes sense to want to prototype them and physically see how they might turn out. Once again, this is a great point to slow down and just let the ideas flow. Shutting down ideas before they're seen might lead to a creative blockage in ideas.
Once you get to testing, especially early on in someone's design career, the client might just say:
At which point you just have to go back to the drawing board and look for some new inspiration. The odds of this first design being the best are slim to none, so it can't be expected to have a great product on the first try. That's why the process is often depicted as a cycle.
A few great videos to watch about this includeKurt Vonnegut's "Shapes of Stories",Ira Glass' "This American Life" about being creativeand, lastly,Inside Out's bonus feature "The Story Behind the Story"(there's no video of this online so you'll have to buy/rent the movie to see them, which isn't the worst purchase you'll make).
Good luck creating and have a great day!
