Think Creative

Have you ever really sat down and thought about your brain? The strange and funny process is that you very rarely do. You can sit and think about your other extremities, but rarely do you consider the one part of the machinery network that actually makes it all function. Maybe, if you have a headache you will feel bad through over drinking of tiredness, or some other ailment. However, because this two pound lump of gray matter sits behind all of your sensory receptors it gets ignored. The brain is in fact a miracle of evolutionary magnitude. The actual fact that it is capable of doing what it actually does is a technical marvel. Scientists for example have been trying to figure out these aspects and recreate them in such a way that computers could have, what we call, artificial intelligence. That we could build a robot that functions in the same way as humankind. the sad truth is that this seems like it will never happen. Reading Steve Pinker's book on the subject has shown some ...

One of the things I see when I am teaching is the great deal of nervousness that occurs when the students are about to do that simplest of actions, of putting a pencil on a piece of paper. After twenty odd years of doing all this drawing and sketching and the like, I find it odd to observe, or at least funny that someone has that nervousness. There can be many reasons for this to occur. I have thought about it whilst sitting and trying to encourage the students to leap right on in there. One possible reason could be that there is a daunting task of seeing how to fill a large expanse of white space with something. Another, and especially in the classroom environment, is the fear of embarrassment in making a mistake in front of people. This is odd, as I have always stated and affirmed, people can only make progress by making these mistakes. However, the one problematic area that can easily explain all these in one form or another, is the way in which we use our brain. I mentioned befor...

What usually tends to take place next i the depth process is to define the images I like the most as fully rendered icons. This tends to be done in illustrator. Illustrator is great for icons and logos, many as you can resize the objects without loosing quality or clarity. So what I tend to do, is whilst designing and thinking about logos, I tend to image how I will achieve them in illustrator. Its hardly worth trying to think of a great logo that can only be made in photoshop. Not saying that you can't use photoshop for doing logos. The issue there is that you have to make a very large version and then hope the resizing wont degrade the image too much. So, for the sake of all that hassle, it is best tho construct the whole image in illustrator. There are a great deal of effects now available and with some training it is possible to make the image look almost as good as a photoshop file, if that is the look that is required. For these logos, it was important to maintain a clean a...

After two weeks of working and tweaking and convincing the final logo has been decided on. In some senses it is still my second choice, although I was very pleased that the concept came in a 'eureka' moment one night as I was feeling desperate about the clients insistence on doing something different from the original design and close to the original. This pays dues to the notion that good ideas come when you are horizontal, sleeping or consciously resting. It has a great deal of gestalt aspects to the design as well. Making the 'sigma' appear from a negative shape that reflects the 'kappa'. What was then part of the process is to deliver the several variations that may be needed by the client for print. This includes black on white and the reverse out against black. Also included are several adaptations of the logo with text positioned differently. I managed to convince the client that the use of PF Archive Pro was better than the original Sans Serif font ( M...

Brainstorming was invented in the early 40's by Alex Osborn. An advertising executive who strived to develop new and interesting concepts to help promote better ideas in his work. The technique became very successful, and now today, many firms and groups use brainstorming as a method by which to get concepts flowing. This has spatted debate to their value as well as developed several other techniques and process that can help in the development of their ideas. One of these other processes is the acclaimed Lateral Thinking process, developed by Edward De Bono. What however, has to be discussed is do these extra brain stimulators really work? Women and Shoes One day, two mothers and two daughters went shopping for shoes. Their shopping spree was successful — each bought a pair of shoes, and all together, they had three pairs. How is this possible? How long does it take to solve this problem? Well, with the understanding of some of the things that De Bono talks about with patter...