Are computers getting in the way of creativity?

After reading the slender, 96 page book, “Paul Rand: Conversations with Students” by Michael Kroeger, I find myself stunned at the concise rantings of one of our industries most famous modernists.

Among the many ideas that Mr. Rand presents to his ‘students’ which include well-respected educators in graphic design from institutions across America and the globe, I found one in particular that struck a chord with me; the creative process. Mr. Rand makes reference to a book written in 1926 by Graham Wallas called “Art of Thought”; a book which presents one of the first models of the creative process. He [Wallas] outlines 4 stages:

Preparation: This is the stage where you clear your head of all the other millions of things you’re thinking about; what you intend to do on the weekend, getting the gas hot water heater serviced, thinking about picking up the kids etc. It involves what we now call ‘brainstorming’, exploring every facet of the problem and coming up with ideas, good or bad, about ways in which we can solve certain dimensions of that problem. Then you leave it.

Incubation: Or as Paul Rand puts it, forgetting about the problem. Go about your daily life for a day, 3 days or even a week until of course you find yourself at stage 3.

Revelation: That ‘spark’ where the solution or “the real problem” simply reveals itself. This is the fun bit! You think you have ‘the’ idea. But, is it the idea? That’s where the next stage is critical

Evaluation: Where you ask yourself, the client, your friends and your family whether they agree that your solution solves the problem. You re-iterate until all are happy.

I should make it clear that I haven’t actually read the original publication “Art of Thought” so perhaps there’s a little bit of ‘chinese-whispers’ syndrome with the above steps, including Rand’s interpretation as well as the research I’ve done on the internet around this book. At $3500 for a copy of it on Amazon, I think hearsay is as close as I’ll get to reading it.

I often have conversations with my wife, a graphic designer also, about sometimes not being able to come up with an idea (let alone ‘the idea’) for a design problem at our creative director’s request. It’s hard work! You get a dodgy brief or some inarticulate direction and they leave you saying “Let’s catch up at the end of the day to see what you come up with.” What then happens is 6 hours of ‘trying things’ in Photoshop or in a sketchbook only to realise that the end result is ‘un-refined’ or you’ve gone in the wrong direction. I’m sure my wife and I aren’t the only graphic designers in the world who struggle with this sort of approach to design.

What I have found though is often my best work comes from when I get told about a job a few days in advance, whether it’s a brand or some little widget we need to create for a website. When the design problem has time to incubate.

What I believe we’re experiencing today is communication at a speed that’s hindering proper (or at least exploratory) levels of creativity. People expect results ‘at the end of the day’ or ‘in an hour’ or ‘within 15 minutes’. Perhaps this is a bigger problem then just creative thought too. Perhaps, as a society we’re simply becoming more impatient? Our expectation of when we should have things (and how we get them) is becoming more demanding. Is the global financial crisis a result of this increased impatience too? People living beyond their means, wanting houses and products now, not later?

Technology’s exponential growth seems to have instilled a fear in business, a fear of being left behind. Yes, design studios are not immune to this either and so it follows that with tools like the computer, like Photoshop, an expectation has been set amongst clients that with technology it is really quick and easy to produce ‘design’. Well, it is – there’s no longer days between design paste-ups, cutting stencils and playing with different materials like cellophane etc. But, isn’t this essentially the ‘production’ phase? Don’t we need to step back from the computer for a moment and focus on the idea? Solving the problem?

Art of Thought focuses on the creative process from a cognitive perspective; it’s simply ‘how our brains work’. It’s science. And although it was written almost 90 years ago, do design studios truly believe that the work they did in the 24 hours after getting a brief from a client is the best work they’re capable of? Or do they simply have no more time because of budgets and deadlines. Our processes have evolved to business demands, our brains haven’t.

In my opinion, a designer is actually working 24 hours, 7 days a week. With inspiration able to come from browsing the net whilst sitting at your computer equally as much as walking down the street and catching a glimpse of the shape of the wing of a pigeon – a keen designer-eye is never really ‘switched off.’ But how do you charge for that? What we’re essentially talking about here is the work of the sub-conscious. The problem is tattooed on to our brain and although when we leave work and ‘clock-off’ for the day, we can’t control those little synapses who are waiting for a sensory cue to make a connection between two loose wires that never thought about touching before and suddenly it’s an idea, ‘the’ idea.

By acknowledging this biological certainty we can begin to set realistic expectations about things we can control like timelines and budget. I believe that by stepping back from the speed that technology is allowing us to produce iterations of a design solution and taking advantage of what we know about the creative process and how our brains biologically work, we can improve the quality of work and levels of creativity and innovation that our studios produce. Surely no client can argue that getting a better idea, a more fool-proof solution to their design problem is not worth a little more time without perhaps, any extra cost.