How do I create?

When watching and discussing the Ken Robinson TED talk, I noticed that he is right when he said that Art is never at the top of the important list in the education system and it is the same all over the world. Why is it that Math and Science are always mandatory, but Art or other creative courses are always electives that you can take only if you want to? I have never wanted to know the angle of a shadow that hits the ground from a building and I never will, it doesn’t matter to me. Another thing that I noticed is how schools make kids scarred to make mistakes. They make them learn a bunch of subjects that they will probably never use in real life and everything has to be perfect. If kids weren’t so stressed about doing everything perfect the first time and just to get it out the way, they might be able to relax a little and actually learn something.

When listening to the excerpted 100 Habits, I thought there were some that really related to me. The ones that did are: look at the everyday world for inspiration, watch videos of comedians, change your environment, and you are what you eat. Look at the everyday world for inspiration because when ever I get stuck on a project if I go watch a movie or do something totally un-related to what I was doing it always gives me new ideas. Watch videos of comedians because comedians take situations that seem normal and make them funny giving you a different perspective on things. Change your environment because if everything is the same, how will you be able to see things in different views. Finally, you are what you eat because knowing what goes into food to make it taste good and guessing things that may also taste good can be very creative.

This could mean that my creative process is about guessing and trying things over and over until I get it right. My creative process is about making mistakes and learning from them. I am the most creative when I am not trying to think about anything and just go out and do something and than reflect on it later. I design the best from looking at what others have done and what is going on in the world and than applying what relates.

Design is...

When I was a kid growing up I always liked to draw pictures on everything. I remember this one time in grade six that we got a book report project and we also had to draw the cover of the book. I was never amazing at writing so I decided to put most of my time into drawing the cover of the book. The cover came out even more amazing than I could have ever hoped and to this day that cover is still the best thing I have ever drawn. Every time I think about it, it inspires me to stay focused and to put lots of effort into my work. Ever since I drew that book cover I paid more attention to other peoples designs and wanted to create more designs. Eventually I got the Adobe software and followed tutorials online to the point where I could do the basics of anything Photoshop without a problem. I enjoyed doing that so much and I wondered how much more there was to do in the design world. In grade twelve I applied to different colleges for graphic design programs and decided to go with Humber. At first I would make things that I liked, but quickly realized it does not matter how I feel about something, all that matters is that the design is sending out the correct message for what the client wants.

When I design, I feel like I am setting out to complete a challenge. Every time I design something it is always different from the last one; which is one of the reasons why I love it so much. Also never really knowing if an idea you have come up with will fit the design challenge keeps it exciting.

When I experience good design, I get excited because I realize one day someone might think something I have created is amazing and inspires him or her to try and create something amazing too. Good design always helps me design something because I can look at it and try and figure out what they did and try and re-apply it to my design. Being able to create a design by taking info of a target market and than using personal knowledge on what fonts, colours, and images would work best to make the target market understand the message that the client wants to get across always amazes me.

Design is important because it is what makes people see differences between companies. It gives personality to corporate businesses. Design is all about getting a message across to consumers. Design is based on a formula of data collected of how people respond to certain things and than interpreted and applied to work for you.