August 2010
17 posts
John Cleese explains the secret to reaching a...
Watch this video of the English actor, writer, comedian, film producer, and all‒around creative genius, John Cleese explaining what he’s learned about creativity, writing, and problem solving.
An invitation to explore the ecstatic truth.
“Sometimes real life doesn’t give you all the right material,” writes Jonathan Harris, “So you have to invent something that’s true to the feeling you had, the feeling you’re trying to get across, even if the thing you invent didn’t actually happen. It’s an idea from Werner Herzog. He calls it the Ecstatic Truth.”
Jonathan continues, “A lot of people don’t...
A world not quite our own.
Somewhere in the heart of Brooklyn, NY, is an old deli. Decrepit and dirty, the deli sits on the corner of a small street, void of any functioning automobiles or beating hearts.
This isn’t your typical deli, though. In‒fact, you couldn’t stop by and buy anything from this deli. You wouldn’t even fit in the door. This deli is a part of an art installation titled “Trainset...
26 of the best creative people on Twitter.
Twitter is a powerful resource for finding people who share ideas and inspiration.
It’s no surprise that creative thinkers, designers, artists, writers, and educators have literally flocked to Twitter in order to connect with one‒another and share ideas and insights. With over 12 million people using Twitter every day, finding those who tweet the most inspirational, creative insights...
Find inspiration, get over yourself.
If you’ve ever come up with a really creative idea, you know how great it can feel to be truly creative.
When you think up a creative idea that is really remarkable, it’s difficult to view the idea from a truthful perspective, because you were able to come up with something creative. Why would someone like you need to worry about finding creative inspiration when you know you can...
Inside the colorful mind of Brook Reidt.
Once in a while you stumble upon an artist with such inspirational talent that you can’t help but bookmark their website or blog or online store.
Brooke Reidt is this type of artist ‒ the type of artist that has a powerful style that is all her own, and it shows.
Reflective of her unique painting style, Brooke’s resume beings: “I’m just like you, searching for something.”...
A quick creative exercise you can do today.
Try this today:
Ask questions constantly, but don’t pursue their answers.
Why do conference chairs typically have gaps in the back of them? What if vending machines had a “Surprise Me” button? Who invented the umbrella, anyway?
Asking questions is the easiest way to gain a new perspective of the world around you. The wondering mind is a creative mind, or so said the great inventor...
Not your typical Public School.
It’s not every day that you discover a creative group of people that are actually doing something with their abilities.
Spotlight on Public School, a collaborative effort between several creative designers, thinkers, writers, and all‒around awesome people. Or, as the agency says themselves: “The same studio, different professions. Similar tastes, varying favorite Bob Dylan song....
Frank Chimero and the lazy hammer
“It’s exercise. It’s flexing muscles and it’s a valid creative endeavor. I’ve been calling it meta‒content, where a person uses preexisting creative work as a foundation for new work. It uses other art as a reference, and its the stuff that forms the foundation of the internet. But, it also makes things frustratingly meta.”
This is what Frank Chimero is describing in his article “Lazy Hammer”,...
July 2010
23 posts
What to do when your creativity wears thin.
Have you ever been working on something creative for a certain amount of time and eventually found yourself feeling mentally drained?
Maybe you’ve tried painting or drawing or writing or designing for a few hours, only to find yourself completely exhausted and unable to press forward due to lack of creativity.
Do you know what it means when the ideas simply won’t come?
Some...
Ze Frank on making ideas happen.
The 99% ‒ a tremendously inspirational group of people and website/blog ‒ have an interview with the creative genius Ze Frank where Ze discusses how he makes ideas happen.
Ze Frank is well‒known across the internet for his creative shenanigans, like a video that teaches you how to dance properly or “The Show”, where Ze filmed himself discussing interesting things daily for a year.
Getting a...
If you can't think of creativity as an...
Hellen Keller, a great American author (and, interestingly, the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree) said it best when she said that “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Hugh MacLeod, one hell of an illustrator and inspirational creative thinker, took what Hellen Keller said a step further in a recent blog post by stating simply: “I reckon that if you...
Why look for ideas where you usually don't?
If creative thinkers of the past have taught us anything, it’s that a huge part of thinking creatively is being able to connect ideas.
If you want to really think creatively, you need to have the ability to connect a lot of seemingly unrelated ideas together on a whim.
Look at some of the greatest inventions ever made ‒ from automobile to airplanes, refrigerators to the computer ‒ and...
14 psychological ways to boost creativity
Psyblog has a great list of 7 research‒based techniques for increasing creativity, the article is definitley worth looking at if you’re searching for creative inspiration.
A few of the techniques listed in the article include: using bad moods to fuel creative thinking, combining opposites, and fast forwarding through time.
If that’s not enough psychology‒based motivation for...
Creativity on the decline in America.
There’s a problem with creativity in America. It’s disappearing.
In what Newsweek is calling The Creativity Crisis, studies are reporting that creativity in America is declining.
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman report:
Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test – a 90‒minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist – has been taken by millions worldwide in 50...
You have to face your fears if you really want to...
Facing your fears.
Embracing the idea that you may lose.
Not being intimidated by mistakes.
If you want to be creative, you have to be unafraid. Unafraid of losing. Unafraid of getting hurt. Unafraid of being wrong or looking like a fool. When the Wright brothers took their first leap off of a small cliff to prove that they knew how to really fly, do you think they were afraid? Of course...
Einstein's advice.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” ‒ Albert Einstein.
One of the most powerful and easy creative...
There is a simple and easy way to discover creative inspiration almost every day.
It’s a technique that creative thinkers have used for hundreds of thousands of years, and it works so well that doing it has changed nations, fueled entire revolutions, and will continue to inspire and motivate the world forever.
What is this big method of discovering inspiration?
Simply asking:...
Creativity, art, and a piano.
While the internet can be a fast‒moving mess of copycats and half‒hearted works of art, there occasionally comes along an individual who takes pride in not only their work, but also in their creativity.
PianoImpro is the type of creative artist that really stands out online. As a creative musician, PianoImpro takes works of art ‒ submitted by readers, or not ‒ and creates an improvisational...
Creativity and your wandering mind.
How often have you found yourself staring out the window of a classroom, office, or bedroom, thinking of something apart from the moment, work, or relationships?
Daydreaming ‒ moments when your mind seems to wander and imagine things almost on its own ‒ hasn’t received the best rap over the past couple of decades. That needs to change.
Many years ago daydreaming was viewed as a type...
June 2010
25 posts
Whether you think you are creative or not...
Henry Ford once exclaimed: “Whether you think you are creative or not, you’re right.”
Okay, so Mr. Ford didn’t exactly say that, but he did say something very, very close. And despite the minor difference in what Henry Ford really said and what is quoted above, the meaning is the same: if you think you can, you can.
If you think you can be creative, you will be.
Beliefs are...
1 tag
Motivation Monday: Eirik Johnson and this side of...
A favorite internet read, The Morning News, currently has put up an interview with photographer Eirik Johnson.
When a photographer comes along that captures seemingly mundane, every‒day, stuff and yet manages to make it something powerfully interesting, you know you’ve stumbled upon a creative well worth looking into.
Eirik has found a way to capture not only places and scenes in his...
Art, photo, and illustration inspiration.
When it comes to creativity, some of my favorite places to look for inspiration are art, photography, and illustration websites or blogs.
There’s something about traditional creatives – those who use traditional and film cameras, physical paintbrushes, paper and glue, etc. – that is empowering and remarkably motivating.
Some of my favorite photographers are those who can take a normal...
Depression and creativity, a favorite fallacy.
Psychological woes such as depression and bi‒polar disorder have been linked with creativity for hundreds of years. Yet research suggests that depression doesn’t improve creativity at all, it actually hinders it.
If depression limits creativity, we can’t help but ask: why is creativity then associated with depression at all?
You can see it in some of the most creative painters,...
Creative Something is all new!
So what’s new with Creative Something?
The website has been growing more and more over the past two years, and I felt that it was time to update the design and purpose (yet again).
This time around you’ll notice quite a few things ‒ but only if you stop by the actual website, not necessarily if you’re one of the 600+ people to only subscribe to the feed. Be sure to visit...
So you want to be more creative?
You are likely reading this article because you are either searching for creative inspiration, or because you want to find a bit of insight, or maybe in hopes that you could learn how to be more creative today.
Luckily for you there are a multitude of ways you can become more creative right now. Even better news: if you know of at least one way to become more creative right now, you can use...
Quality in creativity.
In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance Robert Pirsig questions the term “Quality.”
What is Quality? Does Quality even exist? How can you define Quality?
Quality is something we all know of, we know it exists and we know it when we see it, but it’s hard to define. You can tell the difference between a creative idea with high quality and one without. But how can you tell...
Questioning perspective to find inspiration.
How do you know that the blue you see with your eyes is the blue that somebody else sees?
What if the entire way you see the world is completely different from the way anybody else views it? Isn’t that guaranteed anyway? How much of your perspective on life, love, and creativity, is different from anyone else’s perspective merely because of the events and experiences you have been...
What inspires you?
We’ve all heard the phrase before: “inspiration is all around us.”
But, come on, what does that even mean? Inspiration is all around us. It surrounds us in everything we do. And yet, when wondering what to eat for dinner, we can’t decide. Inspiration is everywhere, and yet I can’t ‒ for the life of me ‒ figure out where to start on my next book. If inspiration is really...
Out of town next week.
This is a note to let you know that there will be no new Creative Something posts for the next week.
As a personal note, I’m going out of town for business and will be unavailable to make posts on the blog. When I get back in town, however, I will be posting more creative inspiration and motivation than you can shake a stick at, so look forward to that!
If you haven’t taken a look...
What's your time perspective?
Talk about inspirational! Here’s a great video on time perspective from Philip Zimbardo.
It’s an insightful video about the different time perspectives, or time “zones” that individual people have and how our different perceptions of time affect everything we do. From relationships with family and friends, to the rising rate of boys dropping out of school.
The 10 minute...
Where imagination and creativity can take you.
Isn’t it odd that toddlers enjoy pretense, and that children and adults are moved by stories, that we have feelings about characters and events that we know do not exist?
This is a questioned posed by Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, in his article “The Pleasures of Imagination.”
Why is it that many of us are easily moved by fictional character or events? Why...
What if... with Avatar Days.
The short video embedded above was produced in just four days. Apart from the amazing quality of work the team was able to produce in such a short time frame, the idea behind the video is powerfully intriguing by itself.
[The film] follows 4 MMORPG players taking about their online persona’s. As they tell their stories we see them go about their everyday lives against the mundane...
May 2010
22 posts
New book! Over 100 ways to think creatively.
What if there was a resource packed full of over 100 ways to think creatively? Something you could carry with you and look to for inspiration whenever you needed it? That something is here, and it’s called “Think Unstuck.”
Think Unstuck is a book with over 120 pages of creative inspiration, strategies, examples, and insights from creative thinkers like Sir Ken Robinson, Scott Adams,...
The mystery of evolution, creativity, and...
If you look back over the past thousand or so years and compare it with one‒hundred thousand years ago, you’ll notice that innovation and change hasn’t occurred as it once did.
For centuries this decrease in creative productivity has puzzled researchers, historians, philosophers, psychologists, and general creative thinkers. What once fueled stone‒age man to adopt new tools and...
Julie Heffernan between dreams and reality.
Julie Heffernan paints elaborate and beautiful paintings. Paintings with powerful, yet hidden, messages.
Her work is inspired by the world between wake and dreaming, a place many have searched for creative inspiration through‒out history. Julie refers to the process of looking to half‒dream, half‒reality images as “image streaming” and has found it to be a unique source of inspiration.
In...
Motivation Monday: Sip the management Kool-Aid
Author and creative thinker Gregg Fraley wrote a very interesting article titled Creativity Has Always Been The “New” Management Kool Aid.
In the article, Gregg looks at a newly released report from IBM that states that “the creative management style – which is marked by taking calculated risks and communicating in new ways – will lead to more success as companies struggle to find their way...
Art made of human bones.
When creative photographer and artist Francois Robert won a collection of old school lockers at an auction for $50, he didn’t have a clue as to what his creativity had in store for him.
Inside one of the purchased lockers, Francois found a human skeleton wired together. Immediately Francois didn’t know what to do with the skeleton, until more than a decade later:
The skeleton lay...
Gaining perspective through travel.
If you want to be creative you need to have an understanding of the idea that there are countless different ways to see and interpret the world.
This is why we travel, or so claims Jonah Lehrer in his article Why we travel. Jonah explains:
“Seasoned travellers are alive to ambiguity, more willing to realise that there are different (and equally valid) ways of interpreting the world. This in...
Motivation Monday: Don't be cool, be yourself.
Does cool kill creativity?
In a day and age where the internet makes it effortlessly easy to become someone cool, or to see what’s cool at the moment, we have to question whether it’s a step in the right direction for creative thinking.
Consider the words of creative genius Sir Ken Robinson: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything...
Creativity is the ocean of our minds.
95% of the Earth’s underwater oceans remain explored. This according to NOAA.
For the thousands of years that humans have walked across continents, built and destroyed empires, traveled to the Moon, and crafted a technology that allows us to connect to one another across the globe almost instantly, we still know very little about the world we live in.
In this way, creativity is the...
Motivation Monday: How journals inspire.
Denise Gershbein needed a break from routine, so she did the obvious and took a brief sabbatical.
In this GOOD article titled Why to Take a Sabbatical Denise writes about the benefits of taking a break and refreshing yourself ‒ and your creativity.
What stands out in the article isn’t necessarily how or why Denise took a sabbatical, but the tools she used to help refresh her creativity....
Does schooling lead away from creativity?
Schooling has been promoted as a road to success for quite some time now. However, as the perceived importance of formal education has grown, true creativity appears to be on the decline. But why?
For all of the education we are getting as a society ‒ in the United States specifically ‒ we seem to have lost sight of what it takes to be a modern‒day Edison, Wright, or Einstein.
It’s...
Google uses creativity to prove their point.
Google’s Chrome internet browser is fast. But exactly how fast is fast?
To answer that question the Chrome team got together with a few specialists to literally show how fast Chrome can load web pages on a computer. Take a look at the video below to see how the team used a bit of creativity to prove their point: Chrome is really fast.
What makes the video so fun is that it’s...
Organic art, natural and cheap?
Natalie Angier explores the rising popularity of organic art ‒ work that depends on natural and organic materials such as hair, compost, and even cockroaches ‒ in the New York Times article: Of Compost, Molecules and Insects, Art Is Born.
Natural materials allow anyone to be an artist, with a little creativity. When you work with natural supplies you are working with more than cost‒effective...
Motivation Monday: You can be a genius too.
There’s a common myth that is popular to follow. The myth states that genius is a class you must be born into.
To be a genius, to match the abilities and creativity of those who have changed the world in some form or another ‒ Mozart, Edison, Einstein, to name a few ‒ you must be a naturally born genius. If you don’t have genius genes in you, then you can’t become a great...
April 2010
31 posts
Designing a space for innovation.
There’s something big happening over at the Stanford d.school.
For the past six years, students and faculty of d.school have tried to figure out what it takes to design a space for innovation. The school wondered if creating a place to inspire creativity and making ideas happen was even possible.
Starting May 7th the school will finally get to test their ideas for an...
Bird Watching, an interview with Paula McCartney →
How can creativity improve on the already stunning beauty of nature?
Rosecrans Baldwin did a short interview with book artist and photographer Paula McCartney to find out.
In the interview, Paula talks about her experience and what inspires her to photograph beautiful environments with artificial birds. Paula says:
When I lived in New York City, I photographed the bird aviaries at the...
2 tags
Motivation Monday: Perception of the artist.
What is art? How do you define art? An even better question: what is the purpose of art?
Towards the beginning of the first World War, two painters were experimenting with a simplistic, African‒inspired painting style. Eventually what began as an experiment in art form by Picasso and Braque would ultimately become a cubist art movement, producing tremendous amount of unique works.
At the...
Insights from Creative Something's past
It was a little over two years ago that I started this blog.
Initially Creative Something was created to be an exploration on creativity, inspiration, and motivation. This blog turned out to be a remarkable source of creativity for thousands of people and continues to help people like you find creative inspiration daily.
Today I want to look back at the past of Creative Something and share...