What We Enjoyed Reading This Week

Creativity and productivity, 2 sides of the same coin

• To be creative is to..
  Create concepts, develop an aesthetically pleasing design, take your time to go exploring into the depths of the unknown to find something unique and weave it seamlessly into our designs, let your mind run on a free reign in the quest to make the design better.
  Perfection leads to unforeseen delays.
• To be productive is to..
  Set a process in place that facilitates the smoother functioning of all activities, use methods where time utilization is at maximum efficiency, ensure that the work is complete on time even if it is at 95% of perfection at the time of completion as against 100%.
  Automation leads to monotony.
• So um, are creative people unproductive or productive people not creative enough?
  Actually no. Each has a very important role to play in seeing a project through, start to finish. Now because inspiration, like thunder rarely ever hits the same spot twice, so one must practice the art of being able to be productive/creative on demand — which is knowing better than being swept away by a mad rush of implementing a great idea, and disregarding the deadline completely, or passing work that’s not up to the mark for client approval, just to meet a deadline.

Thought processes budding designers need to nip in the bud

• Assuming that designs are first objects of admiration and “inspiration”, and then they are tools of problem solving
  Sure it is our job to make things look appealing to the eye, but that’s not the only thing we’re supposed to do. In order for those designs to look pretty and be functional (more about this here) we need to study the content and why it was written the way it was, rather than just flipping our lids over how much content there is and how we’re going to accommodate it all/get rid of some of it.
• Assuming that spending some time with the fundamentals of graphic design means that you’re not good enough yet.
  Sure people might call you a novice, or a newbie or whatever derogatory term of “endearment” they prefer, but they’ll be left speechless when the “new” designer is able to come up with a design that not only looks good but also does a pretty damn good job at organizing and classifying content. Having said that, it’s going to be a while before you figure out where you’re going wrong with your design, and fix what’s messing it all up.
• Assuming that Learn. Practice. Analyse, are only words to train by
  Let me rephrase that for you, Learn. Practice. Analyse are words to live by. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a budding designer or a budding anything. Hell even if you’re experienced you still need to Learn. Practice. Analyse everything you do, because that’s the only way you’ll constantly keep getting better at what you do.