filling Archives | Eiffel Over

December 8, 2020December 15, 2020

Preparing the colours for your Professional Palette

High contrast image showing Oliver Broadbent mixing up paints on his palette to illustrate the concept of preparing the colours for your professional palette

There are some inputs to our creative process that we build up over time so that we are ready to draw on them whenever we work on a new project. In this next post in my series on creative thinking tools for projects, I will share with you another source of inputs for the Kalideacope. I call it the ‘preparing the colours for your Professional Palette. These are the set of colours from which you paint your ideas. The image this phrase conjures up for me is of the Impressionist painter spending time in their workshop in Paris getting their paints ready before they get on a train from the Gare St. Lazare, head out into the Normandy countryside and paint a landscape. You have to do the prep in the workshop before you can go out and paint. But how does this apply to us?

December 3, 2020January 25, 2021

Filling the Kalideascope – inputs from colleagues

Together, the people around you know so much more than you do. In my last post for now on Filling the Kalideacope – gathering inputs for the creative process – I am suggesting that you tap into the vast resource of information and insight that is the people around you. Ask them about the context, the setting of the brief. Ask them if they have done anything similar themselves. Ask them what ideas the brief inspires in them. How does the project make them feel?

And then they speak, listen. Don’t interrupt. Don’t pitch in with your idea. See where the train of thought takes them and go along with them on the ride.

December 2, 2020December 2, 2020

Filling the Kalideascope – previous projects

Humans tend be to attracted to novelty – Oo, the shiny new thing – but sometimes what we need is in what we know already. This post is another in a my series on ‘Filling the Kalideascope‘ – gathering inputs to the creative process. Today’s input is your previous project work.

December 1, 2020December 1, 2020

Creative inspiration from December

A new month, new good intentions. Just like when I started a new exercise book at school, when I would commit to being extra neat (and then forgetting about it a few days later). It’s good time at least to think about how the advent of December can influence your creative work.

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020

Filling the Kalideascope – go to site

This post is another in my series about inputs to the creative process, what I call ‘Filling the Kalideascope‘. Today’s input is visiting the site, and it cuts the heart of what it means to be a human designer.

November 23, 2020November 23, 2020

Asking someone instead of Googling

What if you couldn’t look stuff up online? This is a question I keep returning to. One answer is that other people might become a more important source of information. You’d need to pay more attention. You’d probably look forward to the opportunity to speak to them more. And you’d remember more about what they said.

The premise makes me think of books set in a time before tv and radio (let alone internet) when the arrival of a new visitor in the house represented the chance to mine a new seam of experience.

November 19, 2020November 19, 2020

Brief explosion – starting a creative project

My starting point for gathering inputs to a creative project is the working brief. The technique that I use with participants in my workshops is what I call the ‘brief explosion’, the first stage in the process of ‘Filling the Kalideacope’. It’s an explosion because from just a few brief words you can generate so many inputs.

November 18, 2020November 19, 2020

Filling the Kalideascope – creative inputs over time

Yesterday I wrote about the inputs you might gather at the start of a creative project. These are what I call inputs in the moment. But there is a different sort input that is only available to you if you put in the work to gather them. I call these creative inputs over time.

November 15, 2020January 25, 2021

Build a Kalideascope for creative thinking

In my last post I cited James Webb Young’s definition of an idea as being a new arrangement of existing elements. He goes on to suggest having an idea is like using a kaleidoscope. As I explain in this second video on creative thinking, in my teaching I encourage participants to create their own kaleidoscope dedicate to generating ideas – a Kalideacope.