115 - The Art Of The Idea

What this episode covers

Ideas. I love ideas. It's the core of any creative endeavour. Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode All tracks from Captive Portal's new album, Having A VHS For A Leg Choir Librarian by Captive Portal When We Were Once by Captive Portal Equestrian Encryption by Captive Portal Line-by-line notes INTRO There’s one thing that is common across any type of creative activity Whether you’re a designer, artist, singer, rapper, whatever It’s all about ideas Big ideas Small ideas Rubbish ideas Good ideas It’s all ideas This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess PLAY MID SONG When people say that thing I hate hearing “I’m not creative” What they’re really saying Is that they don’t think they can think of ideas And even that’s not true either They think that can’t come up with ideas But that’s just a story that they tell themselves Because over the years People get creativity and idea-making hammered out of them As they get older, they think they can’t think of ideas anymore And actually, coming up with ideas isn’t actually that difficult You’ve just got to be fearless Actually, maybe fearless is a bit strong We’re not talking about going to battle here Or a duel to the death But you do have to let go of your inhibitions a bit And inhibitions, fear and doubts become more deep-rooted as we get older The biggest inhibitor to coming up with an idea Is the belief that an idea has to be good But actually The only way to get to the good ideas is to get past the bad ones first Seasoned creative people are good at this Because they come up with ideas all day long They can actually run through a whole boat load of ideas in their head And analyse them in an instant Then pick out the good ones That’s a skill that’s developed through years of training and practice But when they first started And when I first started All my ideas were crap And then when I came up with a good idea It had either already been done Or I didn’t have the skills to execute it Coming up with the ideas is only one side of the coin It’s an important side of the coin sure But a good idea The BEST idea in the world Is nothing without execution And good execution at that I’ve seen many designers over the years with a great idea for a logo Then I see the final result And I look at it and think “ehhh, that could have been a little bit better with some more work” The way I see it, the creative process involves two parts And both require lots of effort and perspiration The first phase Is the ability to empty your brain out onto a piece of paper Every last idea, no matter how good or how bad Straight down into a sketchbook Then you leave it for a few hours or days And try all over again to empty your brain out again Coming up with ideas at this stage is equal parts hard work and enjoyable The second stage Is picking the best of those ideas Which in itself is a gargantuan task Then taking that idea And executing on it And executing really well Ideas are weird They’re everywhere And all around us all the time They accompany us in the shower, when we’re washing up or when we’re walking around And then when you really need them They’re nowhere They can’t be commanded or asked to appear when you want them to You just have to wait And relish the opportunity when an idea arrives And grab the idea with both hands OUTRO This was AADA. I’m Craig Burgess. All three tracks in today’s episode are from Captive Portal’s new album, Having a VHS For A Leg Love the name by the way... The tracks were Choir Librarian by Captive Portal When We Were Once by Captive Portal Equestrian Encryption by Captive Portal For a line-by-line run down of this episode, go to askadesignernaything.com/ep115 I’m back tomorrow for another episode of AADA Support Ask a Designer Anything Ask a Designer Anything Website Twitter (@craigburgess) Ask a Designer Anything on Facebook