March 2010
25 posts
Studies show light bulbs are illuminating →
There’s an interesting article that recently came out titled Bright Ideas: Light Bulbs Stimulate Insights.
In the article several studies review the impact that famous symbol of ideas and creative thinking the light bulb has on insights. The studies show that physically seeing a light bulb spurred creative thoughts or insights in students from different universities around the...
Live webinar today with Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken Robinson is a name anyone working in any creative field surely will have heard of. He’s the author of the New York Times Best Seller The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, and is most widely known for his 2006 TED talk about how schools kill creativity.
Today ‒ March 30th, at 5PM Pacific time ‒ Sir Ken Robinson will be doing a live webinar for free. This is a...
3 tags
Breaking with routine. →
Creative thinkers often break with routines, but an essential part of breaking with routine is having a routine to start with. Jack Cheng, a brilliant writer and designer, explains the benefits of routines for creativity:
One of the biggest advantages of having routines is what comes out of breaking them. Think about the excitement you have when you get a new project after working on a previous...
6 tags
Motivation Monday: The ink of Ken Orvidas.
Ken Orvidas is one hell of an illustrator.
His creative illustrations can be seen in huge publications, annual reports, and about a thousand other places you’ve likely looked. His knack for creating colorful artwork is enough motivation to get you thinking about your own talents.
As much as I’d like to say more about Orvidas, finding details on him is incredibly difficult to do....
The Oddest Book Title →
…winning titles have included “Living With Crazy Buttocks,” “High Performance Stiffened Structures” (an engineering book), and “If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.”
Books that have won previous years award of Oddest Book Title by Britain’s Bookseller trade magazine are definitely quirky and out of the normal. This years winning title? “Crocheting...
Whatever it takes.
You’re going to want to go ahead and take a look at this amazing work for Achievement First Endeavor Middle School.
Pentagram (undoubtedly one of the best creative design agencies in the entire world) put together this unique and inspirational design for this middle school in Brooklyn, NY.
With a little paint and some bold typography, a school designed to change the life of its...
1 tag
How to maintain creative motivation.
How can you stay motivated to create?
Despite that powerful feeling of accomplishment when you complete a project or solve a problem, it’s hard to stay motivated with each new project or problem that comes your way, right? So what can you do? How can you keep yourself thinking creatively and stay motivated?
Kevin Cornell, a truly brilliant illustrator and designer, believes that...
Football and ballet. →
Creativity is all about connecting ‒ or finding the disconnects ‒ between items, people, activities, etc. So what better exercise in creativity could there be than comparing football and ballet?
From the article:
So what’s the difference between a footballer and a ballet dancer? Top footballers train for two to three hours a day and might do an hour’s work in the gym after that. Their...
Motivation Monday: a bunch of Squares
Erwin Wurm is an Austrian artist who creates unbelievably eye‒catching exhibits and sculptures.
Really, truly, Erwin creates stuff that you can’t help but stare at or even chuckle a bit about. View some of his remarkable work right here to get some really powerful creative inspiration for today.
Here’s a great quote from Erwin about the approach Erwin uses with his art,...
Inspiring yourself.
An interesting take on inspiration. Christina Empedocles, a very talented illustrator, painter, artist, and what have you, uses ‒ in essence ‒ her own work as inspiration for her paintings and illustrations.
You read that right.
Christina takes photos or printed material and folds it and pins it and throws it together in order to create stunning works of art. But she doesn’t stop...
Imagination is not creativity.
If you haven’t read “The Element” by Sir Ken Robinson yet, you need to pick up a copy.
In this book about using creativity to find your true purpose ‒ your “element ‒ Sir Robinson discusses an important distinction between creativity and imagination. You may think that imagination and creativity are one in the same, but, as Sir Robinson explains, they certainly are...
Motivation Monday: what Cody Hamilton sees.
There are photographers and then there is Cody Hamilton.
Cody is somewhat of a cross between photographer, photo re-toucher, illustrator, and creative genius. His digital portfolio is inspiring to say the least. He uses situations and framing and digital editing to create works of art that you can’t look at and then forget. These are photo that will stick out in your mind and make you...
2 tags
"Two Weeks" fan music video →
Even if you’re not a fan of the band Grizzly Bear, you can’t deny that this fan‒made music video for the song “Two Weeks” is awesome.
The video ‒ created by a fellow named Gabe Askew ‒ is a twisty and turny CGI film that has some incredibly cool and fun elements. Click the headline link and take a look at the video for some weekend creative inspiration, you won’t be...
The value of cultural contrast and imagination.
If you’re struggling to be creative, here’s some good news.
Two fairly new studies on creativity have released their findings. The results from these creativity experiments ‒ while not entirely surprising ‒ can be helpful if you need a little creativity boost.
One study finds exploring contrasts and commonalities between cultures helps unlock creativity – news that would not...
8 million portraits.
One afternoon he put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and ended up sketching all 310 kernels, one at time in descending order of size for a book called “Every Piece of Popcorn,” not that he sold many copies.
Jason Polan is putting every New Yorker on paper.
That’s over 8 million people, drawn on a sheet of paper in a notebook barely larger than your phone. Why is Jason Polan...
“I try to make the photos feel less like my life and more like my memory.”
– Jonathan Harris, digital artist.
U of T gets David Foster Wallace Archive →
Adding to its collection of archives by literary heavy-hitters such as Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo, the University of Texas’ Ransom Center has acquired the papers of the late David Foster Wallace, author of the massive 1996 novel “Infinite Jest,” several collections of short stories and powerful literary journalism.
Some great news for the University, and the general public as well....
7 tags
Motivation Monday: the absolute best of "But does...
If you’re looking for a little creative motivation today, all you have to do is ask yourself one question: does it float?
But does it float is a remarkable web gallery of creative goodness, to say the least. Curated by two gents that go by the names Folkert & Atley, the web gallery features posts in a peculiar fashion: often using a quote or famous insight as a title, followed by a...
What does it mean to be creative?
Being creative means solving a problem in a new way. It means changing your perspective.
Being creative means taking risks and ignoring doubt and facing fears. It means breaking with routine and doing something different for the sake of doing something different. It means mapping out a thousand different routes to reach one destination. It means challenging yourself every day. Being creative...
4 tags
Artists take over doomed market estate. →
You’ve got to watch this inspirational video today.
More than 75 artists have moved into a condemned housing block in north London, transforming its empty rooms and flaking walls into vibrant works of temporary art. On the eve of their public show – which lasts for one day only before the bulldozers move in – artists and former residents give us final, lingering look around.
5 tags
What happened to Aha!?
Remember that great idea you had last Fall, just before the trees became naked and you locked yourself inside your home for the winter? What happened to that idea?
You were doing something not very important and then that idea suddenly struck you. “Aha!”, you exclaimed. You convinced yourself that it was a remarkable idea, an idea that would surely change the world. The more you thought about...
The feeling that something is missing. →
Kanye West wrote a little something about creativity (read it here). While the original post isn’t incredibly easy to ready, the fine folks over at Put This On have reposted a much easier to read version of Kanye’s post right here.
The gist of what Kanye thinks of creativity is summed up in the last few lines:
For me the hardest thing is to ‘just’ agree and that is what sparks...
Why you should buy art. →
Access to contemporary art is often restricted by high prices, including my own, that put it out of reach of the majority of people who love art…Art, in many ways, is a luxury commodity and the larger question remains, “what is enough?”
I love this print by William Powhida. It’s selling out quickly so if you want a copy you’ll have to act fast! As of this writing there are...
Brian Rea has a lot to fear. →
An exhibition entitled Murals that opened at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona last week gave Rea a chance to not only face, but also trace, his worst fears.
3 tags
Motivation Monday: Through the focus ring of...
What makes a good photo great?
Is it the subject that makes a photo worth looking at for more than a few seconds? Maybe depth of field has a lot to do with how great a photo is. Does the type or brand of a camera impact whether or not the resulting photos will be good?
For T. Reilly Hodgson, a 22 year–old photographer from good ‘ol Canada, a good photo is a memory captured by the...