Some time ago I stumbled onto the book “50 succesmodellen” (or “the change book” in English) by Michael Krogerus. It’s a tiny little book filled with ideas, frameworks and models. Boy, that sounds boring. It ranges in topics from “Recognizing winners” to “What does your circle of friends say about you”. The most helpful one…
The most critical rule for any brainstorm is this: postpone judgment. Make a clear distinction between diverging and converging. Or in plain English: first come up with a lot of ideas (silly, serious, stupid, whatever), then select the best one. But don’t try to select the best one while coming up with the idea. Why?…
One of the hardest thing to explain in the holy triangle of idea – design – concept is the meaning of “concept” . I have written about what a good (creative) concept is before, but obviously those few rules* still leave a lot of room for interpretation. One of the words that can better help…
Yesterday I gave a lecture for the honours programme of the Hanze University. Seven students that are not used to flexing their creative muscles had to be taught about creativity and loosened up in three hours. Compressing all I teach my students at the Academy for Pop Culture into a three hour session is quite…
On the excellent Front Row Daily podcast I heard an interview with Andrew Stanton. Director of Pixar movies like ‘Wall-E’ and Finding Nemo. Here’s a few lines from that interview. (Full podcast here). Do you feel a responsibility when the movie opens to get the budget back? ‘Yes and no. I only think about one thing….
OFF-TOPIC: in short installments I’ll be writing a chronologically linear set of essays on creativity, concept development and design. One day it may turn out to be a book. Enjoy, discuss, react. Yesterday I did my umpteenth training on concepting (developing conceptual creative ideas) and I think I taught myself more than anyone else. Since…
The short answer to what a good concept is: A good concept narrows your focus and therefore eliminates possibilities. A good concept narrows your focus and therefore guides you to possibilities that are a bit less obvious. A good concept inspires the design and production process. A good concept is a guideline to the design…