How to be More Creative

(This passage is a presentation given by Ross Chowles who is working in advertising field. In this presentation, he discusses how to more creative. Although he focuses on creativity in advertising, he does offer many interesting and useful ways for everyone to be creative even if you are not doing advertising.) 

How to be more creative – China presentation

What is creativity?

Creativity is solving a problem

For instance: money. People used to carry around heavy ingots of precious metal. This was very inefficient as it was heavy. If you were rich it was hell.

So those clever Chinese people invented paper money which was far lighter and you could stuff your money in your underwear without much discomfort.

  

Creativity is making something that has never been seen before.

The wheel seems so simple once you’ve seen it but to think of the wheel for the first time is pure creative genius. Copying something that already exists is not creating. Doing something new that another person has not thought of is creativity. Here Gaudi, created many buildings that even 100 years later seem shockingly new.

  

It’s making something that is beautiful
In advertising it’s about touching someone’s emotions
In advertising it’s about manipulating someone’s mind
Ok, so how do you do it?

The ability to create something that moves people, that takes people’s breath away must be the most sublime act of all. Artists, musicians, architects and choreographs are all driven to achieve this goal. 

  

People don’t think about the product they buy, they feel about the product they buy. It’s our job to make people feel about our client’s products.

We create desire in people, we instill hope, we play on their shame, their fears, their greed, their dreams. And we use creativity to do this.

Creativity is the tool

There are levels of creativity – like all things in life you get the good, the bad and the very ugly. The creative process is no different. For every great movie written and produced, there are 10 mediocre ones and twenty crap one. We all want to be brilliant.

1.    Understand people – Every creative person should study psychology or at least read about those who understood human beings: Freud, Jung, Shakespeare. It’s only when you get in touch with how a human works that you can talk to a human. If you understand human beings, you can manipulate their attitudes. After all, our job is to make consumers choose our client’s product over the competition.

2.    By discarding your prejudices – Prejudices hold you back. They keep you in a world of stereotypes formed in the past, and they are generally wrong. South Africa, for instance: when you ask people in the rest of the world to describe South Africa, this is what they describe. Animals in the street, Nelson Mandela, starving children, civil war and child soldiers. While Nelson Mandela and animals do make up a large part of our country and culture, we also are a sophisticated country that supplies China with steel, diamonds and so on. Prejudices keep you trapped in the past. Let them go. Face life with an open mind.

3.    Travel – One sure way of breaking down prejudices is to travel. It’s  a big world and very different to what ever you are used to. Travel stimulates. Travel educates. Travel rubs your nerves raw. Travel opens your mind.

4.    Make friends with people different from you ­– If you spend all  your time with people you went to school with, in the area you grew up in, listening to the same music telling, the same jokes, you’re not going to grow much. By making friends with people who are not like you – different age, race, religion, wealth – you’ll be exposed to a foreign but stimulating world.

5.    Fall in love – Falling in love releases endorphins. Your senses are heightened. Your outlook is future focused. Creative energy is released. Take Picasso, probably the most prolific artist ever. Prolific in volume and in developing groundbreaking styles. Every time Picasso fell in love with a new muse, he created a new style. A new way at looking at the art that shook the world

6.    Listen to Miles Davis – Like Picasso, Miles Davis changed the course of music. And like Picasso, he did it many times. The musician’s musician, Miles will take you to places that regular straight-up-and-down pop music can’t. The mind becomes as lucid as the music because the music is not trapped in a rigid conformity.

7.    Build things with your hands – Because of the computer, we tend to live in a two-dimensional world. But working in a three-dimensional world makes you understand space and how things fit into that space. There is also such a primal sense of satisfaction when you make something with your hands. I built a lot in my house(book shelves, CD boxes).

8.    Read – Someone once told me that ignorance is temporary. One book and it starts to disappear. Books fill your head with imagination and stimulation. You can live other people’s lives, and in a different place and time. All books are good. Great books are fantastic. Read 1421, about how China discovered the world; Perfume, all about the sense of smell and murder. A Short History of Nearly Everything makes sense of what they taught you at school but you didn’t understand. Civilisation, about western art, inspiring. Art books, ancient and modern. All good for the mind and soul.

9.    Write a book – We all have a story to tell; write it down. Different disciplines are required in writing a book but are invigorating all the same. I’ve finished mine on how to start and run an ad agency. I’m not going to print it but rather make it freely available on the web.

10  Paint – Painting has to be the scariest but most liberating form of expression_r_r. So go to lessons, buy canvasses and have fun. Also try different styles. Keep exploring different techniques until you find your style.

    11  Watch movies – Great movies. Stories well told are a stimulus  and a treat. But make sure you watch great movies as opposed to crap films.

12 Make your own movie – Take a camera, get an edit package, find some music and have fun. Some movies was made purely with a stills camera.

11 Cook – They say people who can cook make better lovers. Cooking is the essence of life. Cooking beyond just filling your tummy can be so creative, so sensual. Best of all, you can have lots of fun experimenting.

12 Start a clothing brand – Hey I did, I just don’t think I’ll sell many. Guess friends and family will be getting my t-shirts for Xmas.

13 Do something different at night or weekends – Filling your evenings or weekends with things other than advertising awards annuals will enrich your life experience that makes your more valuable as a communicator. Doing exciting things will stimulate you, relax you and let you meet people you would not have met in the ad agency.

14  Embrace obstacles – Creative people hate it when an obstacle is given, like ‘you can only use one colour’ or ‘you have to use a celebrity’ in your ad. Creative people feel that this restricts them. The truth is that the opposite is true. When you have no restrictions, you go around in circles. But when you have a restriction, it actually stimulates solutions. For instance, here is a corporate ID we did for a sound studio. The client could only afford one colour. This forced the designer to come up with an idea that required one colour but still told a story. She took a sound wave that you see on the computer when you are recording, but made the sound of the name of the company on the letterhead, the name of the engineer on the business card, the sound of ‘fax’. This design went on to win lots of awards. Embrace obstacles. They are your friends.

15 Embrace technology – I’m frustrated that because of my age, I don’t grasp technology like people younger than me. The better you know Photoshop, or searching the web or cameras, the more powerful you are. The more control you have. If you are not the master of your technology, you’ll only be able to create to the level of your understanding.  But never forget the tools of the past, for they have soul. I love designers and art directors who paint, or cut paper or make collages. Old techniques give textures the computer wishes it could give.

16 Make your own blog – Self-expression_r_r must be the most stimulating process, and where better than your own blog. It’s your space and you can say anything you want. Unlike a diary, it’s public which makes the heart beat a little faster knowing someone’s reading it.

17 Use your gut to make decisions ­– Too often we make decisions with our head. That decision nearly always turns out to be the wrong decision. Your gut instinct is the best decision-making tool. Do what you ‘feel’ is the right thing to do.

18 Don’t give up – It intrigues me that on Wednesday, Sting is messing around with a tune, on Thursday, he’s written Shape of My Heart. But if he gave up on Wednesday, he wouldn’t have created Shape of My Heart. You need to keep on pushing until you really know that your best idea is done. Is a better idea just around the corner?  Yes.

19Be brave – Get naked. Fear of ridicule holds us back. If you were brave enough to get naked in front of a whole bunch of people, then you will be brave enough to put your work under scrutiny. The more you let your fear of ridicule go, the more exciting your work will be.