This page intentionally left blank HOT-WIRING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS STRATEGIES FOR PRINT AND NEW MEDIA DESIGNERS CURT CLONINGER Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for print and new media designers Curt Cloninger New Riders 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510/524-2178 800/283-9444 510/524-2221 (fax) Find us on the Web at www.newriders.com To report errors, please send a note to [email protected] New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education Copyright © 2007 by Curt Cloninger Project Editor: Alison Kelley Development Editor: Camille Peri Production Editor: Hilal Sala Copyeditor: Liz Welch Proofreader: Haig MacGregor Compositor: Kim Scott, Bumpy Design Indexer: Valerie Perry Cover design: Mimi Heft Cover Illustrator: iStockphoto.com Interior design: Mimi Heft Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, elec- tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the pub- lisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact [email protected]. Notice of Liability The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any per- son or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it. Trademarks Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services iden- tifi ed throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefi t of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affi liation with this book ISBN 0-321-35024-3 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of America For Julie. You give me light; you are my day. Contents Introduction: 5 Varying Degrees of Derivation . 99 What This Book Is and Is Not About. 3 Be Less Derivative . 100 What’s So Great About This Book? . 5 Be Hyper-Derivative . 105 How to Use This Book . 9 (Hypothetical) Frequently Asked Questions . 109 1 A Process Primer . 13 A Brief Guide to the Creative Process . 14 6 How I Stopped Worrying and Variations on the Creative Process. 26 Learned to Love the Edit. 111 Strengths and Weaknesses of the Debunking the Myth of “Scratch” . 112 Creative Process . 28 Designer as Editor . 114 Brainstorming: Expand and Contract . 115 2 Basic Creative Wisdom. 31 The Proof Is in the Product . 117 Believe in Your Creative Powers . 32 Don’t Wait Around for “Eureka!” . 35 7 Software and Systems . 119 Overvalue the Conceptual . 36 Generative Software . 121 Visit the “Zone” but Don’t Live There. 43 Interview: Joshua Davis . 129 Grid Systems . 137 3 Four Ways to Bypass Inertia . 47 Nonstandard [Ab]Use of Exploratory Sketching . 48 Standard Software . 144 Time-Limited Designing . 61 The Art of Design. 147 Interview: Stefan Sagmeister. 62 Scope Plumbing. 65 8 Maintaining a Personal Oblique Strategizing . 66 Design Playground . 149 Don’t Knock It Till You Try It . 75 Playground Rules . 151 Playground Advantages. 158 4 Mining Art and Design History . 77 Playground Interview: Look to Design History . 78 Dustin Hostetler of upsod.com . 161 Look Beyond Design History. 80 Playground Gallery. 168 Two Ways to Mine: Forms and Concepts . 81 Willful Superfluity . 177 Know Why and Internalize . 96 iv HOT-WIRING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS 9 The Five Realms of Design. 179 Conclusion: Tag. You’re It. 245 The Realm of Media Constraints. 180 The Realm of Audience Needs . 187 Exercises. 247 The Realm of Client Needs . 190 Time-Limited Exercises. 247 Interview: Clement Mok. 193 Style and Genre Exercises. 247 The Realm of Professional Ethics . 198 Perspective Exercises . 248 The Realm of Aesthetics . 201 Conceptual Exercises . 248 Balancing the Five Realms . 203 Selected Resources. 250 10 Balance Forms and Credits. 252 Reconcile Paradigms. 205 Balance Formal Elements. 206 Index . 254 Reconcile Opposing Paradigms . 212 Interview: Zak Kyes . 224 Interview: Milton Glaser. 234 The Human Element: You. 243 CONTENTS v This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank INVENTION, MY DEAR FRIENDS, IS 93 PERCENT PERSPIRATION, 6 PERCENT ELECTRICITY, 4 PERCENT EVAPORATION, AND 2 PERCENT BUTTERSCOTCH RIPPLE. —WILLY WONKA 2 HOT-WIRING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS INTRODUCTION WHAT THIS BOOK IS AND IS NOT ABOUT Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart be creative in business, homemaking, was once charged with determining diplomacy, community living, and the whether or not a fi lm was pornographic. like by developing underutilized cogni- In his ruling, Potter said he wouldn’t tive thinking skills that function irre- even attempt to defi ne pornography— spective of the media or communication “but,” he added, “I know it when I see genre. Creativity in product design and it.” Many people feel the same way architecture is constrained by real-world about creativity. They can’t explain technical specifi cations that mercifully exactly what constitutes creative visual limit the number of possible solutions, communication, but they know it when since a chair must support a person’s they see it. weight and a building must not collapse in a storm. But creativity in graphic If merely defi ning creativity is tricky, design can be a very subjective, elusive teaching creativity is even trickier; teach- goal because it is constrained only by ing creative design is downright chal- the open-ended nature of human visual lenging; and teaching creative graphic communication, in which there are as design is veritably daunting. One can many exceptions as there are rules. 3 The problem, in other words, is that creative codifi ed. In many ways, Bauhaus-inspired graphic design is not like algebra. There’s no modernism has dominated twentieth- century single right solution to any given design prob- design. Yet its success and proliferation may lem. There are a handful of best solutions, have less to do with its objective correct- hundreds of fairly decent solutions, and mil- ness than with the fact that it is quantifi ably lions of bad solutions. Not that graphic design teachable—there are right ways and wrong is without its handbooks of principles, systems, ways and not a lot of in-between. Usability and laws, doctrines, rules, and regulations. All are information architecture have inherited mod- valuable and have their place in design educa- ernism’s self-assuredness and quasi-scientifi c/ tion. But at the end of the day, knowing grid psychological methodologies. But just because systems, color theory, and the history of typog- something is systematically teachable and com- raphy doesn’t necessarily make you a creative prehendible doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the designer any more than knowing a pinch from a best approach to a given problem. Any design pint and how to operate a Cuisinart makes you problem includes stages that require a more a creative chef. intuitive, less systematic approach. Literally hundreds of books are avail- All that is to say, this is by no means a mod- able that cover the basic principles of graphic ernist or neomodernist design book. Nor is it an design. This is not one of them. I will revisit antimodernist book. (I love grid systems, and some fundamental design principles in order the work of my students consistently improves to tease out various creative solutions, but this once they learn grid systems.) This book strives book is not a graphic design primer. Instead, to do more than dogmatically support or sys- it tactically applies various design principles tematically refute any single historical design within the context of the creative process. approach. It strives to inspire creativity. This book does not champion any single Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies design philosophy or school. Instead, it for Print and New Media Designers is a notebook shows you how to balance and apply vari- of methods, tools, habits, and paradigms that ous approaches based on your own personal various successful designers use. They range strengths and the particular requirements of from what might be considered best practices each individual project. and trade secrets to some pretty wild experi- Modernist design expounds a set of prin- ments to just plain common sense. Some may ciples that are self-assured, utilitarian, and drastically alter the way you see your role as a THIS BOOK STRIVES TO DO MORE THAN DOGMATICALLY SUPPORT OR SYSTEMATICALLY REFUTE ANY SINGLE HISTORICAL DESIGN APPROACH. IT STRIVES TO INSPIRE CREATIVITY. 4 HOT-WIRING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS What’s So Great About This Book? designer. Others may affi rm your current meth- I am not the only person in the history of the odology. Taken as a whole, these approaches civilization to have thought a bit about creativ- are meant to supplement, inspire, spark, rev up, ity. My research has taken me from Jungian psy- and otherwise hot-wire your current creative chology to post–World War I Soviet engineering, process. from aleatoric music to the elongated illustra- As such, this book is less of a “how-to” tech- tions of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, from nical manual and more of a sourcebook for cre- hacktivist tactical media to the handcrafted ative approaches.