Graphic designer Jack Bardwell and I used to be colleagues at the Useful Simple Trust, he bringing alive the many wacky ideas I have had about how to teach people engineering. Over our three years working together we had many fascinating and long discussions together about creative processes and teaching design.
I recorded this episode with Jack last summer just before he left to puruse new adventures in interior architecture. I miss him in this office, so it has been a pleasure therefore to listen his voice in the edit, and to hear the many fascinating things he has to say about his creative process, what he has learnt from working with engineers, and, most intriguingly, the spine-tingling effect other people’s creativity can have on him.
In this episode we get into:
- Tuning in to other people’s creativity
- How people express creativity without realising it.
- The receiver is the context
- Cooking is design
- The importance of copying in developing skill as a designer
- How new skills open up possibilities, too much skill can limit them
- Using jigs to constrain the creative process
- How a carefully tuned jig can force a particularly aesthetic on what you create.
- How you communicate different parts of the design to the client.
- When is a jig not a jig.
- Thinking in lists
- The way information is presented to you is not necessarily the best way for you to look at it.
I’ve got a feeling this going to be one of those episodes I keep coming back to when I need angles for looking at the world. Enjoy!
- Listen to it on iTunes
- Listen on Stitcher
- Stream by clicking here
- Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”
Continue reading “#11 Show notes – Jack Bardwell – Spine-tingling creativity”