Creative Strategies
This year in my Oils 420 class I was challenged to be more creative in everything I did. I learned a lot of different strategies to help propel my creativity from the course book, Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity by Keith Sawyer, 2013. The author of this book gave us eight steps to be more creative, these steps are: Ask, Learn, Look, Play, Think, Fuse, Choose, Make. For me, the steps that helped be creative with my class projects were, Learn, Look, and Make.
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Learn
This step had a big impact with my first creative project for this class. While attempting to put together the shelving I was making, I had an issue with my wood breaking when I attempted to screw each piece together. So I watched some videos to learn how to accomplish this with out messing up the wood. I then learned a few ideas like drilling pilot holes for the screw or using small nails. Unfortunately I did not have the materials or tools I needed to do this so I tried using some medium sized nails that I did have. This worked better, although the wood didn't break all the way it still got damaged. |
Look
This step helped me with my first blog post, when I up cycled wood pallets to create shelving for my house. At first my idea was to mimic the look of a mug hanger my wife bought. But as I looked at it I started to envision things that I would change or could of designed better, to be more functional. In the end, although this piece and the shelving I created are made out of the same material, they are very different. This has taught me to be more creative with my ideas, and not just mimic other ideas I see. |
Make
This step is almost a no brainer. Of course having good ideas is nice but they only become great if you do something with the idea. Before this class I always had an Idea to repurpose some pallets to create a shelf. In my head it looked perfect, but I never made the time to implement my idea. This class pushed me to use my idea and create the shelf that I envisioned. |
The biggest thing that hindered my creative process was the time restraint, have to finish my projects by a certain date. For me, I feel I am able to be more creative if I can take my time and finish a project without the pressure of a due date. Having said this, seeing the 8 steps laid out helped me get through my creative process a lot faster. Something else that has always hindered me from being creative is not know what to do or make. So having the freedom to do what ever I wanted was hard for me.
After utilizing these steps as well as the other five that were mentioned in the course book, I took what I created and made some creative changes to it. I did not include this in my blog post because I did this some time after. Below I have included two picture, the one on the left was my first attempt at creating the shelving I envisioned. The picture on the right is of the shelving I made after my creative changes. My second attempt was almost exactly what I had in my head.
I plan to implement the 8th step "Make" from Zig zag: The surprising path to greater creativity by Keith Sawyer, 2013. in my everyday life. As I mentioned before I have always had creative thoughts but didn't make them reality as often as I would like. I hope to become better at not only implementing this step but as well as the other seven.
Reference:
Sawyer, K. (2013). Zig Zag: the surprising path to greater creativity. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA.