Creativity exercise for designers: #3
This is my third post in the series of creativity exercises for designers. The first one was aimed to develop ability to make connections and the second one to look at things differently. Today we shall talk about the process of generating ideas under certain specified requirements.
This is a very important point as most of the time designers do not create things just following their fantasy but rather achieve the set objective, whether it is necessity to match existing concept or obligation to fulfill the client’s request.
How to develop creative ideas within established theme? Find it out by completing the following exercise:
Step #1 – Task assignment. At this stage you need to come up with a theme and item you need to design under this concept. Basically you need to imagine yourself in the role of a client, putting objective for a designer. For example, you need go design chandelier in the nautical style or bed with organic shapes. I put the following task for myself: “to design table lamps for the space in Indian style”.
Step #2 – Brainstorming. Now on this step you need to write all possible associations with the defined theme. For example, if it is marine style, you will probably think about stripes, ships, anchors, ropes, sails, etc. The best way to generate ideas is to use mind map: put the topic in the centre and surround it with arrows for writing all associations that come to your mind. The main thing on this stage is not to over analyse – write the first things that come to your mind and generate as many as possible. Have a look at mine:
Step #3 – Creating Mood Board. Now browse the Internet and seek for inspirational images for your mood-board (Pinterest might be a wonderful source for them). Your mind map will help you in your search. Among your finds select the ones which attract you most:
Step #4 – Designing. From you mood board start to pull out the shapes, textures, forms, colours. Think on how you can use them in your design. Remember:
After these four little steps the sketches for my table lamps were ready. I used the Mehendi ornaments for the lampshade design and the postures of Indian dancers for the designing the basement of lamps:
Looking forward to hearing about your results.
Need some more inspiration? Have a look at this 37 ways to boost your creativity on my Slideshare channel:
[slideshare id=23561810&doc=creativity-130627034434-phpapp01]
- How to unlock your creativity and start thinking like a designer: Exercise #1 (essenziale-hd.com)
- How to unlock your creativity and start thinking like a designer: Exercise #2 (essential-hd.com)
