‘When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’
– Abraham Maslow
Reflections on
Skills + Making
In Odyssey Homer tells us that life is about finding your own Ithaca. Or in simpler terms, everyone will find their destination in the end. But do actually find anything in the end and is he a lifelong journey toward that destination not just about the journey itself? In my own journey through Graphic Design, I have gone from Graphic Designer to Art-Director to Film-Maker to Creative Director to Executive Creative Director to Creative Consultant and yet here I am, back learning to basics of how to be a Graphic Designer with the idea that I can become an educator.
This got me thinking about how we view ourselves and listening to this week’s lectures it dawned on me that the most important element in all the lectures was the idea of discovery and creative output. Even though Steven Manchipp may work on “billion” dollar projects, his idea of changing a mindset reinforces the idea that he is on a voyage of discovery which has resulted in him doing transformative work. But I wonder if his belief in this work is genuine or is it economy-driven? Something he touches upon when he talks about not having outside projects or launching a “product’.
Whereas Sam Winston’s idea that he would still see himself as an artist/ maker feed into our need for creative output. Exploring starts with curiosity and Tom’s acknowledgement that we’re basically monkeys playing on a cultural playground reinforces the idea that we have been given the gift to go explore and create. But again I question the value of attaching a value to the idea of the “cultural sector’ as this ties an intrinsic value to your creativity by tying it back into a socio-economic model.
I wonder when listening to this week’s lectures are we ultimately failing to understand and prepare for a continuingly and rapidly changing world with complex issues and if we should be looking less at side projects as services or products and start looking at how we can use our well-equipped toolbox to work with and find solutions to some of the issues around migration, economy, environment, and tolerance for example.
I also see a lack of daring to be adventurous. Daring is taking a stance and again, nowhere in the side hustles was I inspired to stop and take notice of what this week’s lecturers were doing outside of their practices. Where was the thinking beyond the NOW and the idea that we need to build for future generations?
An analysis of what I was left with that would help inform my own way of looking at my skillsets were:
When you want to learn more about creativity, think beyond the creative sphere, look around, and see where you can take inspiration from.
Play – Toy freely with ideas and build on those ideas not from an economic viewpoint but from a social perspective on how you contribute to an ever-changing narrative.
Are we as designers failing to be educated to understand the world beyond the contemporary disaster of late Capitalism? How do we establish alternative educational models to ensure that our thinking goes beyond the economic-driven model even when we look at self-driven projects?
Further Thought 1:
I’m a proponent of the model enthused by No School: A movement of Creative Education whereby they encourage: 1) A cooperative form of education an answer to counteract late-capitalist competitive forms of education. 3) As an eco-centric and creative perspective in education and 3) A non-reductionist form of learning – and an answer to outdated reductionist educational models of teaching.
(Ref. No Scholl Manifesto, Ilse Ouwens, Fabiola Camuti, Betje Stevens)
I wonder could this model to education also be applied to ourselves as Creatives whereby we install a new creative paradigm that allows us to use our skills in a way that is of benefit beyond what has been mentioned above.
Further Thought 2:
In relation to the question of self-initiated projects, I believe that by saying yes to a project you are already self-initiating it. I believe in an approach that to truly deliver on a project, a personal interest must exist and that interest must be given the chance to be expanded on. That’s not to say that I have’’t explored numerous self-initiated projects and started multiple companies, but I am of the belief now that these projects to a degree are worthless given the current environmental crisis and that as creative we must strive for bigger thinking that allow us to attach ourselves to project that provides a level of autonomy and scale to deliver global solutions.
One example of this is that on my current project I have had the opportunity to explore a pilot project which looks to take data break from the hands of larger organisations and place it firmly in the hands of the owners, in this case, farmers. While starting a pilot project, it has already expanded to be a much bigger project that will have ramifications across the framing industries and the drinks industry in how we look at data, who owns the data, and ultimately use that data.
(Ref: Food Data Market goes global with EU Commission’s NGI Atlantic)
Self Skills + Making
On analysis, it is hard to identify the skills I have and the skills I lack, and where and what is the impact on my own practice. I’m fortunately afforded the luxury of being able to plug in hard skills and work with multi-disciplinary teams so I really see a lack of skills as not being an issue nor do I feel the need to go learn a ‘root’ skill to enhance a piece of design due to lacking any gaps in my skillsets. Ultimately I relay I’m good at, idea generation and execution plug in the skillsets required to bring that idea to life.
If I was to break down my skills purely from a practical level and how I apply them I would note that I am an X-shaped creative and I step away from the notion of the T-Shaped creative (generalist and specialist) and look to position myself as someone who has deep expertise built on solid credibility but can also lead diverse teams to accomplish a goal.
(Ref: I, X, and T-Shaped Designers: What’s the Difference?)
Thinking beyond this I would say I have four main skills that serve me both as a creative :
Multi-disciplinary. I can cross multiple disciplines inside and outside of the Graphic Design sphere with ease and am comfortable delivering on a global level business and strategic solutions delivered with creative integrity.
Innovative. I look for ideas and executions beyond the expected. I view each project as an opportunity to promote the idea of ‘Cathedral thinking’ and encompass elements of this philosophy into the creative output. (*Note, still be tested on the MA!)
Critical and ideological. I embrace both materialist and utopian idealism and look to bring a critical and ideological thought process informed by personal research into trauma in the body and the psychobiotic revolution and how this can create a new model of learning and output in the creative arena.
Value. I deliver not only value to clients but more importantly to myself through how I look to examine each project through the lens of identifying ‘The Self’. This is driven partly by the fact that I suffer from C-PTSD and the need to balance creative output with mental health wellbeing but is also driven by my desire to inform and educate others through the transference of value, knowledge, and skills.
So what do I identify as lacking in my pursuit of the above and how do I look to close the gap and explore these skills or processes I wish to develop?
Creative Education and the No School Approach. I'm curious to explore and open up the meaning of creative education that creates a space for more experimental thinking beyond the T-shaped outputs expected of the industry.
Stronger sense of the ‘Self’ in my work. I often view my output as that of a ‘schizophrenic creative in so far as I have a large and varied portfolio but when driving into it beyond the stylistic and idea-driven nuances it is hard to identify what of ‘myself’ is contained with that work.
Create a discourse around my philosophical and ideological leanings. By this, I mean to wish to explore from a critical and practical perspective the ideas I have around the identity of the ‘Self’ and the connection between gut and brain and how this can be explored in relation to the emotional connection to design and its place in future economic models. Or in other words, tear up the idea of ‘Edward Bernays, Propaganda’ and instead focus on the psychobiotic revolution that is the next stage of human understanding and development.
(Ref: The Pyschobiotoc Revolution, Scott C. Anderson)
Further Thought 1:
Why – I realise the world is burning and that there is a whole sphere of thinkers looking to find solutions to help humanity. So the question is why, on the other side of the spectrum, do I feel as an individual that I can contribute. I guess it boils down to how I’m hard-wired on one side but also the idea that I believe we can re-wire ourselves to think and find solutions in a different direction and that by exploring this approach to re-wiring a ‘solution’ or ‘meaning’ may be stumbled upon that proves a worthwhile contribution to all the other efforts or even more fundamentally through the application of a no school approach, inspires another generation to fundamentally think different creating a paradigm shift which benefits us all.
Research
Reading into the above and how I could map my own creativity through the lens of my process and skills, what I identified was the common thread of the ‘Self’ and how that self interprets its own picture of itself. This led me to think about what would it be like to see your own brain scans as you undergo this thinking process and would these scans light up or be denser in areas where you have the full cognitive ability or would certain areas be devoid of this? Places where gaps exist for instance and what would the connectivity be for highly creative people who have been shown to have significantly more nerve connections between the right and left hemispheres (Ref: CREATIVE PEOPLE HAVE BETTER-CONNECTED BRAINS)
What also struck me was the highly graphic nature of today’s imaging processing of the brain and how could I integrate this colour in a visual representation the above or alternatively could brain scans be reduced to line drawings that could then be viewed as a series reductionist graphical devices that would help visualize process and skills. I quickly discounted this as I felt it was too abstract to succinctly communicate the key message.
What I wanted to achieve was a key visual that had the visual impact of brain scans married to the data visualisation modelling graphics that are found in visualisation software such as Power BI.
Further Thought 1:
From Unlocking Creativity in the Brain To begin to uncover the neural underpinnings of creativity, scientists are using the latest imaging technology to peer into the brains of professional artists. By studying jazz artists and freestyle rappers, for instance, scientists can gain insight into how the brain handles the spontaneous creation of music — be it in the form of musical notes or words.
One such study compared the brain activity of professional jazz pianists as they are freely improvised or played a memorized composition on a keyboard while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. In addition to widespread activity in sensorimotor and language areas, improvisation was associated with increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), a brain area involved in introspective thinking. Improvisation was also associated with decreased activity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a region involved with executive functions, such as planning and inhibition.
In another study, scientists used fMRI to peer into the brains of freestyle rappers as they improvised or performed rehearsed lyrics. Similar to the jazz pianists, improvisation in the rappers was associated with increased activity in the MPFC and decreased activity in the DLPFC.
The findings suggest that when the regions of the brain involved with executive control are disengaged, musicians may be better able to indulge in self-expression.
Patway Exploration
Gradient Exploration
Final Outcome
Working through the process above left me quite frustrated as it proved to be time-consuming and not as rewarding as I felt it would be. Normally I would outsource this level of detailed work. Also considering that the last two assignments had resulted in what I felt were quite commercial outcomes, I wanted to see if I could explore a more playful approach to the final outcome that didn’t look to communicate the various process and skills but pushed me to consider what ultimately these skill and processes feed into, the ‘Self. This pushed me down the idea of something I’ve explored a number of times in my recent work, the idea of developing a character or mascot to break through the traditional tropes of corporate identities and systems.
The mascot is an aesthetic vehicle and identification figure which feeds into the economies of soccer clubs, police, demonstrators, or sots of cultural production. It combines contradictory connotations.
The comic shell of the mascot gives one the freedom to become someone else or to see through the eyes of another creature… (Ref: Glossay of Undisplined Design, Spector Books)
A perfect system to which to hang an idea of the “self’ from and a playful execution that doesn’t take itself too seriously…which as designers we can agree on we do too often.
During the course of the development, what I then settled on was a self-initiated publication in place of a visualization that would act as a vehicle to explore the central themes around how creatives visualise processes and skills. This was partly inspired by looking at Ok-RM’s work on ‘The Real Review’ and how they developed a mascot device to act as a signifier throughout the course of the publication.
Reflection
I keep running up against the same issue whereby my explorations result in a commercially viable product. As Sam Winston notes, you keep ruining all the ‘Fun Stuff’. But perhaps what has transpired is that the commercial approach to my output indicates that I perhaps have established a design sensibility that allows me quickly sketch a result on a ‘napkin’. And perhaps by doing it, the true learning is in the exercise of critical discourse that I am applying to my writings.
Or maybe this is all a post rationalisation and the struggle continues in identifying who and what I am as a designer and creative. Though on reflection, I’m happy I didn’t go with the standard exploration on how to visualise my process and skills and instead took a step back to the days when I used to publish periodicals and magazines. This may result in a new direction that allows me to combine my interest above in exploring creative education and the No School approach, identifying a stronger sense of the ‘Self’ in my work and creating a discourse around my philosophical and ideological leanings.
A note on Cultural Appropriation
As issue around cultural appropriation was raised at the previous notes lecture and I thought it important to add my one viewpoint to the conversation on the wall:
The issue with cultural appropriation is that it can fossilize a shared belief about cultures even though it may be wrong or negative. Without knowing the context of the above one also has to know that cultural transfer naturally occurs through repeated assemblies of creatives’ own experiences, shared knowledge, and cultural models, and in the modern age, how do we evaluate graphics derived from cross-cultural experiments? Do we simply say that it is cultural appropriation or do we look to understand the deeper meaning of the work and the artists/ creative’ connection to that work and then attach our social and moral compass to that work? A further thought is that one of the issues is that people naturally assume that the arts and creativity are truly universal but what we forget is that art and design are also a part of a person's set of cultural understandings of the world and reality. (for further reading see Henry Steiner and Ken Has, Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace).
The Wall
Feedback to Wes
I like the isometric process and earlier sketches Wes. It reminds me visually of Paul Rand's identity work on NeXT computers (Steve Jobs).
Feedback to James
Agree with Joesph on the idea of setting music to this. Check out Brian Eno's Music for Airports, defined as the first Ambient recored release though interestinally enough the first music specifically designed for background music was pioneered by a company called Muzac. Inc. Exploring environmental music and playing arounds with layers may produce some interesting results and you don't need to be a music producer to achieve an ambient result.
Feedback to Tove
A wealth of knowledge Wes Tove, I see elements of Hilma Af Klint, a Swedish compatriot. Would love to see this developed out as a painting or hand drawing to make it feel like an abstract work, though through certain material applications as Wes mentioned, eg foil-blocking, this piece would be really elevated.
References:
(Ref. No Scholl Manifesto, Ilse Ouwens, Fabiola Camuti, Betje Stevens)
(Ref: Food Data Market goes global with EU Commission’s NGI Atlantic)
(Ref: I, X, and T-Shaped Designers: What’s the Difference?)
(Ref: CREATIVE PEOPLE HAVE BETTER-CONNECTED BRAINS)
(Ref: Glossay of Undisplined Design, Spector Books)
(Ref. Henry Steiner and Ken Has, Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace)