Manifesto Draft

Don’t ground work in reality.
This is a very personal mantra for me. I always wanted to get into media design rather than anything else because I always wanted to create things with no thought given to how they might work in reality. Make things impossible, make them crazy, make people twist their heads around trying to find the right angle for up.

Celebrate creativity.
It’s hard enough being a designer before somebody wants you to design a bland, corporate banner for their insurance company. It’s very important to keep yourself creative, so even in cases like this, find something to channel your creativity into – be it the font or the subtle gradient on the background. Creativity will get you places where nothing else can.

Make it impossibly.

On occasion you might find that something you make starts turning out looking ordinary, or at worst cliché (assuming that wasn’t the intention). If you find yourself lacking in ideas then take what you have and completely rebuild it out of something completely unexpected. Make whatever you create so that it couldn’t possibly exist. Make it out of smoke, glowing lights, neon pasta.

Make what you want to see.

There is no point trying to create something you have no interest in, sometimes it’s hard enough getting the creative juices flowing on something you’ve been wanting to make for ages, let alone something that holds zero interest. You’ll make something much more impressive if it’s something you want to make.

Critique your work, don’t contain it.

Don’t ever tell yourself off for making something too big or ambitious. Yes, look at your work analytically, and get others to too, but if you or somebody else says “that’s too far-fetched” then don’t tone it down – turn it up a notch.

If in doubt, turn it upside down.

When looking at anagrams, it often helps to reorder the letters backwards. Take the same approach with design – if you’re feeling uninspired, take what you’ve made and flip it, twist it, bend it, whatever. It’ll give you a whole new perspective.

Conceptualise in context.

I may never hear the end of this one, but I find it very difficult to conceptualise something in a medium other than its intended final form. If you’re planning on sculpting, don’t sketch on paper, bash some rocks together. If you’re animating something, don’t sketch a storyboard, make it roughly in your chosen software etc. Trying to fit a stroke of creativity into something other than what it was meant for has only served to constrain my ideas to what can be displayed on paper.

Gross, J. (2011). The Process of Creativity. Retrieved from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/06/the-process-of-creativity/

Dorst, K. (2001). Creativity in the Design Process: co-evolution of problem-solution. Retrieved from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2013/cs7601_spring/papers/Dorst_Cross2001.pdf