Finding inspiration and realizing creative ideas is a long process. And it’s not always straightforward, either. Even creating slots at Cookie Casino, developers need a bit of creativity. We learned what questions most often interest creative people, and tried to answer them.
Where to Look for Inspiration?
Inspiration is not a mythical muse, but the ability of the brain to act out of the box. To pump up this skill, you need to immerse it more often in unfamiliar surroundings. Besides obvious ideas like new exhibitions, music and movies, the road to work along an unfamiliar route, an unusual hobby or trying to learn a few phrases in an unfamiliar language can help get inspired.
Creativity is about solving standard problems in unconventional ways. To set the brain on a creative wave, sometimes it is enough to rethink the usual actions that are usually done on automatic. You can try doing daily rituals like opening doors and brushing your teeth with your non-mainstream hand.
Another option is an exercise in which you have to think of 100 alternative uses for any given thing, such as a bicycle. How about a bicycle shuffleboard, a bicycle knife sharpener, or a picture painted with painted wheels?
Inspiration depends, among other things, on your surroundings: the light in the room, the fresh air, the order on your desk, nice stationery or a smartphone that you like.
How to Come up With an Idea?
There are different ways. Often ideas come on automatically. This does not mean that the person did not do anything for it – a favorable environment and the skill of the brain to come up with new things. If the idea doesn’t arise by itself, try several techniques that direct the imagination in the right direction, and choose the most appropriate.
The theory of inventive problem solving is 40 techniques for coming up with non-standard solutions and developing creativity. To create them, Heinrich Altshuller studied the database of patents and highlighted the main methods that helped come up with inventions. The use of such techniques begins with the search for a contradiction in the problem to be solved. For example, a bus must hold many passengers but still maneuver easily at city intersections. To solve this contradiction, the methodology suggests several lines of thought: either the bad quality that hinders the problem must disappear, or a good quality must appear that helps to solve it, or the object must remain the same, but then the external conditions must change. Possible solutions are a harmonica bus, double-decker buses, or an analogue of the tunnels under Las Vegas that Elon Musk’s company built for Tesla cars.
Another technique is Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking. It’s based on techniques that help improve already existing objects and solutions. One of them is the “random word,” aka the focal object method. Let’s say we want to improve a frying pan. To do this, we need to choose one or more random words – for example, “cat”. Then we describe the properties of the new object and try to attach them to the frying pan. The cat is fluffy, flexible, can see in the dark, lands on its paws and meows. If you take the latter property, you can come up with a frying pan that beeps when the food is ready.
Is It Possible to Learn to Be Creative?
Yes!
Creativity isn’t a character trait or innate qualities, but a skill that can be developed. Here are examples of famous artists/musicians/writers/directors who began their craft at a fairly late age.
Henri Rousseau worked as a tax inspector and began painting at age 36 but didn’t show his picture to the public until 42. At 27, Vincent van Gogh enrolled in the art academy, which he dropped out of, deciding that an artist doesn’t necessarily need talent, and went on to study on his own. He created his most famous paintings after the age of 35. The Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian practically didn’t study music until he was 19, and wrote his first serious work only at 33. Wagner didn’t start making music until he was 15, which is quite late for classical musicians. Paul McCartney didn’t get his first instrument until he was 14, and it was a trumpet.
How to Form a Unique Style?
It’s hard to create something completely unique – even the discouraging Cubists and Expressionists works were similar to each other. In the first stages of creativity, it’s okay to imitate other people’s work completely to hone your technique, and in later stages to mix genres and styles, to make references and reinterpret other works to form your own style.
Artists often join together in schools and create their works in creative residencies, influencing each other in one way or another. Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Before forming his own style, Paul Gauguin painted landscapes similar to the work of his Impressionist friend Camille Pissarro.