Ideas Are Found Not Inspired.

Most often we only see the results of creativity. We admire the advertisement, film, painting, design, installation or innovative technology and we say to ourselves, “I wish I’d thought of that.” There seems to be an intangible air of mystery surrounding such achievements that requires a special talent or that most elusive of all creative gifts, genius. But in reality, ideas aren’t inspired - they’re found. 

In business and education creativity has come to be valued as the essential ingredient in change and progress. It’s valued above knowledge and technique since both are now so easily accessible on the web. Having spent twenty-five years as Creative Director of several advertising agencies and five years teaching Communication Design at The Glasgow School of Art, Singapore, the biggest challenge faced by the majority of students is how to achieve a consistent level of creative originality. The answer is to embrace a studio practice that is driven by research and this, in my opinion, is the ‘threshold concept’ for communication designers (and others within the creative industries). Over the past two years I have interviewed students, faculty, designers and artists asking them to relate to me 'how designers learn to think.’ The result is my conviction that creativity is a journey of discovery that resists easy answers and reveals that "ideas are found not inspired." 

Let’s start with someone often considered a genius, or at least very talented. Accustomed to hiking in the mountains, the hills of Paris were a simple pleasure for the young Hemingway as he made his way on dark winter days to the top floor of the hotel where he began his first novel. He enjoyed climbing those stairs in anticipation of the day’s work ahead and at the end of the day, the decent was equally wonderful, knowing that he had “something done” and would be sure of going on the next day. “But sometimes,” he confides, “when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."' So finally he would write one true sentence, and go on from there. (Ernest Hemmingway, A Moveable Feast, 1960)

Novelists, painters, designers and poets, they all have to find their own way of making creative progress. For Hemmingway it was to find the truth about his topic and to write it down as simply and clearly as possible. No embroidery, just the truth. He was prepared to sit through the period of not knowing what to do, turning over the possibilities in his mind, procrastinating and feeling blank as he watched the orange peel slowly ignite, recognizing that this was the gateway to what would come next. He wasn’t waiting for inspiration. He was sifting through his options and running the story in his imagination, while looking for the phrase that contained that gem of truth that would get him going.

Communication designers are expected to be creative. Most advertising agencies still refer to the people who are expected to come up with the ideas for brand communication or product campaigns as the ‘creative people.’ And the industry is now divided into media agencies and creative agencies. A similar situation is evident among graphic design companies who talk about creative branding. So creative people are paid to be creative and in order to justify their salaries they need to be seen to have really bright ideas. But for the student setting out on his or her career this is the biggest thing that they need to master. They talk about inspiration and finding ‘the twist’ but much of it remains derivative. And this happens even in professional companies where creative people, needing to prove their worth, often under pressure from tight deadlines, produce work that on the surface appears clever but is usually a triumph of technique over substance. Instead it would be more useful to study the brief to find out what the essential problem is and then, through research and investigation, expand what’s known about the subject in order to discover an effective creative solution. This is a ‘research based process’, taught in places like The Glasgow School of Art, where I lecture Communication Design. But students find it hard to grasp. Accepting that ‘ideas are found not inspired’ is in my view, the ‘threshold concept’ for communication designers. 

I have tested this proposition in conversation with students and faculty over the past two years and through my involvement in the activities of assessment and evaluation and it has become evident that those students who achieve the highest grades have crossed a threshold in their thinking that others have not. And in my professional practice I observe the same to be true, with the most recognized and creatively awarded designers, artists and directors virtually living in a world of exploratory thought. A common thread, is that those who accept research (and searching) as the form of their creative process are ‘happy’ to start a project with the acknowledgement that they don’t have ‘a clue.’ They have resisted the lure of the instant idea, preferring to live with a state of uncertainty (or not knowing) as the normal embarkation point for a project, recognising that the solution needs to be found - uncovered through a process of investigation. Whereas, those who do not embrace this approach settle for an instant idea or ‘methods’ of altering what already exists.