BIANNUAL CREATIVE SUMMIT

Winter 2012

IN THE BEGINNING…

Everyone is creative• As a child, you were imaginative, curious, playful.• It’s still their under all the “layers of growing up.”• It’s not IF you are creative, it’s HOW?

• 98% creative at age 5• 10% creative at age 30

We need to awaken that self, deep inside of us.

CREATIVE GREMLINS

What hinders our left brain?• HABIT• NOISE & Fray• Negativity• Fear

We are going to go through tools to paralyze the gremlins so they don’t paralyze you!

BOO! YOU SUCK!

HABIT

Creative Gremlin 1

HABIT

When we take the same path over and over again, it feels safe. It’s expected. It’s comforting. In this day and age, we need safety and comfort from the busy chaos. It’s natural for us to gravitate towards habit. HOWEVER…

Remember when we were children? We were not afraid to take a short cut to see where it would lead. We explored. We took risks. As we got older, we became risk averse.

HABIT

We need to get into the habit of getting out of the habit.

We need to cross-train your brain.

BRAIN-ERSIZE!• Stretch your brain• Simple exercises that take you out of the comfort of daily habit &

routine.• These force the brain to make new connections, thus growing

capacity & willingness to think and act creatively.

“The brain is a beautiful thing. It wakes up with you in the morning and goes to sleep as soon as you go to work.” Robert Frost

HABIT

QUICK BRAIN-ERSIZE! Lets GO!

Brainstorm 25 alternative uses for a toothpick.

Make a list of 10 vanity license plates for yourself. Pick your favorite and make one on template given.

Give creative paint names to colors around you and share.You will be given a deck of brain-ersizes to keep at your desk when you need to break habit.

HABIT

Another way to break monotony is simply by getting up and moving somewhere else! Go to a different room, different desk, even the bathroom. Go outside, take a walk around the block. Walk the stairs. Clear your desk to go think somewhere else undisturbed for 30-60 min.

Fill your creative bank. Clear your desk so you can run out at lunch to feed your brain. Visit a shop nearby. Go to the library. Visit the museum on a free day.

And this leads me to my next gremlin….

NOISE AND FRAY

Gremlin #2

NOISE & FRAY

Email, and the digital, busy world in general won’t shut up.

Your right brain (that logical, critical side...that side that’s like SPOCK in star trek?) doesn’t shut up either once it’s awake.

We need to shut it all off so we can turn on creativity.

NOISE AND FRAY

Email and the web• Choose to turn it all off for an hour while you work.• Choose to batch respond to emails twice a day with

an autoresponder as to when emails will be responded to, and if there is an immediate need to call. The trick is to follow your rule.

• Walk away to another place to work, sans anything digital.

NOISE AND FRAY

That pesky right brain just won’t quit.• Morning papers are a great tool, a la Julia Cameron.• Every morning when you get up, have a journal waiting

and write three pages of whatever comes to your brain…total stream of consciousness. No more, no less. The idea is to let your left brain play without the right brain butting in. Your right brain is not fully awake yet when you just get up, and your left brain is all refreshed from dream-land. So it wants to come out and play, and you should let it!

• Eventually, ideas bubble up easier and your right brain becomes more open to them and less critical.

NOISE AND FRAY

Allow for “percolation”• After intense brainstorming, or working intently on

something, get away from it.• Sleep on it, forget about it all together, go for a walk• Give the idea(s) room to breath and grow• The brain does not turn off, especially the left side• Even if you are not consciously thinking about the

problem or idea, your conscience self will leave the unconscious alone to do it’s thing.

Find your percolation spot (create your worksheet)

NOISE AND FRAY

Awakening your intuition• Your intuition is a quiet & loyal friendThe more you practice your intuition, them ore alert you’ll be to it’s signals

Intuition actually lives in the right brain.connections and answers are going on all over in the left brain. You need quiet, calm and to slow down so that they emerge and get through to the right brain then emerge as a solution. That tickle in the right brain, that 6th sense is your intuition.

NOISE AND FRAY

Exercise your intuition• Play a game with yourself, guess who is on the

phone before you answer it• Guess who is going to win, before the end of the

game

• Could be as easy as when it pokes you, ask yourself what it is trying to tell you.

• PICK-3 process game (hand out)

NOISE AND FRAY

SLOW IT DOWN!

It’s not that we CAN’T, it’s that we honestly forget.

So.,,think of ways to remind yourself to slow down

-Set up a reminder to turn off your outlook for 15 min a day.

-Put your watch on your other wrist. Each time you go to look for it, it reminds you to get up and walk around the office. (this is also a

brainersize)

-Turn off everything and go outside the office for 5 minutes for a gulp of fresh air.)

NEGATIVITY

Creative Gremlin #3

NEGATIVITY

A negative comment can snip a bloom of an idea quicker than it can get a chance to truly blossom. We all have experienced this ourselves. Using positive language can guide ideation to someplace really great.

NEGATIVITY

3 key phrases to ask during a brainstorm-

“What if…? What else..? Why Not?”• We do this already, making dinner, picking out

clothes, etc.“ What if | we make chicken and rice tonight?”“ We have no rice”“What else? We can make potatoes instead? ““ Why Not? Hal likes potatoes.”

NEGATIVITY

What if? The first idea that pops in your head, no matter what.

What else? Can you expand on it? With a new idea or variation? Does it have legs?

Why not? Figure out why each idea would not work based on a genuine obstacle-but many things are doable. PUSH!

NEGATIVITY

How to give “positive judgement”?• Lets face it, not all ideas are good ones, but sometimes a

not so good one can build into a clio-worthy idea depending on where it goes and grows.

• At some point, things do need to end up on the cutting floor. But it need to be for the right reasons and done in a non-destructive way.

• Efficient with resources too, lets not waste time on an idea that truly is not going to get off the ground.

CAREFUL! Sometimes it is easier to kill and idea than support it! Each idea will warrant 4 negative responses before 1 positive one.

NEGATIVITY

Positive Judgement =

I. Q.I: INTEREST Q: QUESTION

What interests you about the idea, then what questions/concerns might you have about it.

NEGATIVITY

Positive language is important

GOOD WORDS• Cool!• Way to go!• Wecould try that!• Yes, and…• That could work• There’s a novel dircetion• Oh, I like that!

BAD WORDS

• Costs too much• We’ve never done it that

way• The boss won’t go for it• Lets sit on it for a bit• It’s not part of your job

NEGATIVITY

Keep an idea alive• Kind of like volleyball, see if it has some life before it

hits the ground• YES, AND….versus YES, BUT……

• Ideas are rarely perfect when thrown in the air. Needs developing and tweaking. DO it on an upnote to keep it alive, see if it’s really something.

NEGATIVITY

LAUGHTER

Children laugh 150xs a day

Adults laugh 15 xs a day

Laughter releases endorphins, keeping you positive, light and open

Look at funny things and pass around, share jokes and stories and laugh!

FEAR

Creative Gremlin #4

FEAR

People want to be safe and warm. Ideas that push mean risk, and getting out of habit-unfortunately all things that make us feel safe. We can make it safe to take risks by positive language/judgement and environment.

Fear can be paralyzing, but not fear itself.• Fear lets you know you are moving into unknown

territory, which is a signal for stirring creativity. It is how you respond to it that is important. From the moment of fear, JUMP! Be brave!

FEAR

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.

Eleanor Roosevelt

OTHER TIPS & TRICKS

COLOR CAN INSPIRE

Color is other stimulus altogether• Have color pens or crayons when ideating

• “We all went off to kindergarten with a magical box of crayons and graduate high school with a disposable ball point pen.”

Surround yourself with visual color. Pull images that inspire you and put them around your work area. Start a pinterest board and/or follow color blogs such as colourlovers.com

“IDEA-TRAPPING”

Also called “idea-awakening”

When we sleep, about 95% of our brain is lit up like a Christmas tree, with neurons firing all over the place! When we are awake, it dulls down to about 10%.

What if you can lure and trap an idea or solution while it is running around at night?

IDEA-TRAPPING

Before bed (or a morning), think about the challenge

• Write down facts you know about it• Rewrite the challenge in questions form a number of

times and choose the best one.• Put questions in a purse or pocket, do not think

about it again.• Go to sleep/continue with your life.• Many ideas will come to you the next day. Write

them down, making note of where, what & when they came to you so you know what stimulus worked to coax it out of your head.

DESIGN EXCERCISES

Logo work• Visit a crowdsourcing site and ook at some of the jobs clients

are asking for. Choose one and pretend it is real. See how many logos on a sketchpad you can come up with in 20 minutes.

Typography• Go online and find a good quote that inspires you. Time

yourself, and see how many ways you can arrange the words and vary the typefaces to create a different look and feel. Play with colors, layers and textures. Try and communicate the message of the quote with what you do with color and type.

DESIGN EXCERCISES

Photo effects and manipulation• Grab a free stock image and bring it into photoshop. A free

one is sxc.hu. For the 1st 20 minutes, see how you can manipulate the original photo two different times.• Use filters, layers, change the composition, omit sections,

apply effects. See how you changed the feeling of the photo both times in 20 minutes.

• After doing design exercises, ask yourself do I have distinct habits when designing? What can I improve upon? How many ideas could I come up with in 20 min.? Was I distracted at all? How can I change that?

IDEATION TECHNIQUES

4 “Elements” quadrant

Mindmapping

Get your butt fired technique

IN SUMMARY

JUST SAY NO TO• Busy mind-emails, social, cell phone, hurry, GO vs.

BE and too “comfortable” (habit).• WORRY, fear and expectation• Assumptions• Judgement• Negative language