Shapeshifting

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will." ~George Bernard Shaw

There is an interesting creative exercise/warm-up that I've run a few times now, and it goes like this: You pick a common object – a paper coffee cup, a paperclip, a plain sheet of paper. And the participants write down in silence all the things they can think of to do with that object EXCEPT what it is meant for. So, the coffee cup can't hold liquids, and the paper can't be used to write something.

And the sheet of paper was kind of a test I threw in there the last time I did it. I thought it might be hard. But turns out it was not. Everyone came up with several great ideas for it. And my favorite was that you could use multiple sheets of paper to sort items into piles – essentially turning the sheet of paper into a space.

Creativity can be elusive to define. But one thing it definitely needs to be able to do is separate what you know something is (an object, an image, a concept) from its underlying shape or form or content. When you can do that, you unlock its possibilities.

The Eames' figured out how to mold plywood to make a chair, but they also saw the possibilities of using it to make lightweight splints for the US military.

Memes often separate a piece of content from its original context and unlock a new meaning.

Part of defining creativity is that we tend to make it a overcomplicated and philosophical. And that's OK. I enjoy being philosophical at times. But it's simpler to think about it as imagination. Everybody gets what imagination is. Can you imagine that piece of paper as a rolled up tube to use as a megaphone or a fan on a hot day? What's hard is that we are served up comps and mockups and rough drafts that feel so close to finished that what else could there be to do? This is partly because risk aversion is real, and partly because we have lost some ability to imagine what could be possible in the space between a napkin sketch and the final product.

I was excited to finally finish my box of Welly bandaids so I could repurpose the metal box. So I pulled out this little insert to throw away, but could not throw it away. It sat on my desk and I used it as a quick phone stand. Then I played around with it and imagined it as many other things as I could.

So stop worrying about "being creative" and get into using your imagination. There's not enough of that today. Creativity = Imagination, Design = Decisions