Creatively Charged: A designer’s toolkit to amplify creative practice
Lariena Kumar
See it On Campus: Level 2
Visitor InfoWhile creativity ebbs and flows regularly and can be elusive, designers face pressure to be continuously creative, under strict restrictions and deadlines. This creates the need to explore ways a creative state of being can be stimulated or generated at will.
This kit has been desgined to help desginers explore and sustain their creative states. It can be used to delve deeper into creative tendencies, see designs from a new perspective, inspire new ideas or just just creative juices flowing.
Approach
Through my project I wanted to explore ways to sustain and amplify a creative state. The creative state here means you have creative energy, agency, and flow and encompasses the intention to make, the process of making and the output.
I have used 6 concepts to cultivate intentionality and continuous engagement over time. The concepts are:
1. creative energy: When you have creative energy you are able and willing to explore ideas, methods, mediums etc.
2. agency: When you have agency you have choices, and you feel confident in making that choice.
3.flow state: When in flow you are completely absorbed in an activity
4. small c creativity: This is curiosity and everyday creativity.
5. the carry-over effect of success – This is when one win however small, enables another win.
6. a reflective lens – When we use a reflective lens we learn deliberately from our experiences.
Methods
My project stands on 4 pillars which are:
CREATIVE IMMERSION
The project began as an immersion into 3 different creative skills. The aim was to create consistently.
Through this process I began to reflect on the different aspects that go into making as well as how different challenges present themselves at each stage.
REFLECTION
I also explored feelings that the process of making was generating, and I delved deeper into the underlying reasons.
This helped me in creating a reflective framework which formed a scaffolding of my project.
SMALL MAKING
Throughout the immersion I realized that the activities that felt the most successful were short. And therefore, building on the idea of small c creativity, I focused on small acts of making.
CONVERSATIONS
To validate my experience, I had conversations. I used small making as a way to invite people to think about their relationships to creativity and engagement.
Concept development
There are 3 broad domains I chose for the kit: reflecting, ideating and making.
The so the first component became a set of 48 prompt cards: categorized as reflecting, ideating and making cards. Through them, I focused on including a broad range of activities.
One of the activities were spider maps. I added this approach to the kit as people found it easier to use a spider map than answering a free response question. I made them into translucent post-its so that they can be stacked on top of each other, to track the emotions over time.
Additionally, I worked on the motifs, the paper quality, and the overall aesthetic to carefully curate each experience.
Since, the most critical aspect of the kit were the prompts some of my considerations were:
1. The activities on the cards should not require massive time or significant additional material.
2. The reflective cards should be non-directive.
3. The ideating cards should be a mix of activities for initial ideation, idea development, idea selection and shifting perspectives.
The next components were blocks and puzzles which would help facilitate small making. I focused on the tactility, auditory and engagement aspects of the puzzles and blocks.
And therefore, decided the material and colour post testing for these aspects.
The puzzle pieces were 3-d printed using ASA so that they had structure and made an audible sound.
The blocks, however, were made of TPU allowing them to be slightly squishy while retaining their shape, creating an interesting sensorial experience.
Lastly, I wanted the kit to be accessible and therefore decided on creating a desirable bag. The bag serves not only to carry the rest of items in the kit but also serves as a beautiful accessory.
And so, I created a hand-crafted leather bag with intricate detailing like the laser engraved design, decorative stitching, complex piecing and a detachable pocket.
I used laser cutting to achieve the various shapes and the engraving in the veg tan leather and then sewed it by hand.
