Creativity Trainings

At the beginning of my BA course, we (students) were told that this year the course will focus on creativity more than during previous years.

Despite not guaranteeing high conversion rates in advertising (at least according to David Ogilvy in “Ogilvy on Advertising“), I believe that creativity and creative approach is important to find the right (design) solution. Creative approach should be integrated part of any design process (”creative” doesn’t necessarily mean unusual and weird) and that the (creative) way in which the message is communicated can help to differ from competition and crate the right image (brand).

First lectures of the course were dedicated to creativity exercises. The goal of one of the exercises was to create three different stories from a photograph – a sitcom, drama and conspiracy. I could tell you how much fun we had brainstorming ideas, picking the right ones and developing them into a stories, above photograph of three old naked men playing golf.

While I was quite confident in developing ideas for drama and conspiracy, my contribution to the sitcom wasn’t very good compared to the colleagues in our group, partly because I don’t know many English sitcoms (because I don’t watch TV too much). My colleagues started mentioning various sitcoms and TV series I never heard about (ie. Golden Girls). I felt a bit lost and I realized, that with this social-cultural gap, I have a disadvantage when developing ideas connected in some way with English pop/culture. (Though fictional drama and conspiracy was absolutely fine for me). I guess, in real world situation, this social/cultural gap can be overcome by careful research, and I look forward to the opportunity to try it out.

Through these exercises (the other one was dedicated to branding fictional products) I enjoyed lots of brainstorming with other students, mind-mapping, quick sketching of ideas and storyboarding. It was great change to my standard creative process, because I’m the only member of the creative department at work.

Looking forward to next sessions!