Readings & Questions 1

In your own words compare/contrast the major points between the Jung and Sasaki essays

Sasaki's essay was all about a creative process founded on research, while Jung's is a creative process founded on intuition.

Think about your own process, which methods do you tend to use and why?

While reading the essays, I definitely connected more with Sasaki's method of creative development. 

Sasaki stated that “critical thinking applied to design” involves a 3-step process of research, analysis, and synthesis. This type of thinking makes a lot of sense to me. With my background in Advertising, I have a lot of experience of looking at say a client's needs, coming up with a strategy for meeting those needs/ solving those problems, and then determining the most effective ways to execute that strategy.

At one point, Sasaki mentioned Experimental Research. I tend to shy away from experimental research when it comes to physical materials, at least. I love playing experimenting digitally and figuring out different ways to manipulate graphics. However, I am not great at thinking in a 3-D space and so I tend to shy away from any sort of exploration in that sense. 

Later, Sasaki said, “It is necessary to make as many analyses as there are types of relationships.” Again, this really resonates with me. When creating a campaign, if research shows the campaign needs to be targeting several different audiences, it is important to craft individual strategies and executions to best appeal to each of the unique audiences.

Jung's essay was a bit to philosophical for me, and I didn't really connect with his creative process. To a certain extent, intuition comes into play whenever excecuting something creative. However, I feel it’s sort-of dangerous to rely on intuition alone. Graphic Design is all about using visuals to convey a message or idea and it is important to make sure you can justify as to why your creative choices best serve to communicate this message, aside from just “oh, I felt like this would be a good choice.”

How does this relate/connect to the theme of creativity in the John Cleese video? 

John Cleese talked a lot about how creativity isn't just some magical thing, it is rather a way of thinking and being. You open yourself up to ideas (I'd lump this in with the research step) and then you close yourself off (once you, say, find a strategy) and begin implementing things sticking to this strategy. You then open yourself up again to be critical of your choices and move forward from there. 

DID YOU KNOW HE'S NEARLY HEADLESS NICK IN HARRY POTTER?!?!?! He also founded Monty Python.

How do you define creativity?

I define creativity as an innovative way of approaching, thinking about, and solving problems - both visual and otherwise. 

Of the many steps to spark creativity, which do you identify with (explain why or why not) and which one do you plan on including into your process this semester. Explain how that addition will strengthen your process. 

I thought Cleese's suggestion of using playfulness or humor to open oneself up to creativity was very interesting. I would love to try and open myself up to being more playful and using humor when developing ideas. This will strengthen my process as it will only lead to more possibilities and ideas, even if it helps get the "bad" ideas out more quickly, one of those "bad" ideas could help lead to a good one!