How To Be A Creative Sponge by Jon Hicks - Oct 2009 - see http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/how-to-be-a-creative-sponge-2 where the pdf is also avail for d/l

1. HELLO!
x

2. JON HICKS HICKSDESIGN
Good morning everyone! My name is Jon Hicks, one half of the imaginatively named Hicksdesign, a creative
partnership based in Witney.
We work on everything from print to web, but probably most well known for the Firefox and Thunderbird Logos.

3. Text
Although these days I work as Lead Designer for Opera Software, working on Opera Mini and
desktop

4. HOW TO BE A
CR EAT IVE
SPONGE!

5. " How do you do it?
How do you get the ideas to
actually design something??"
“Mr F” from London
Well of course, there are many different ways that a design actually gets ‘done’, but today I’m
here to look at just one.

6. " Designers need to be visual
leeches, constantly
cataloguing and recording
information like a camera that’s
always snapping photos"
Jason Santa Maria
As designers, we’re constantly looking for ideas. We can never switch off.

7. " It seems to me that if you're a
designer, then design runs
through your veins. You can't
stop looking at things through
your designer eyes. "
Ben Terrett, ‘The Design Disease’
"

8. Visual Leeches ?
Creative Magpies
Visual Vampires
Creative Sponges

9. CREATIVE JUICES!
mmmm!

10. The 3 stages of the Creative Sponge
COLLECT!
CATALOG!
CREATE!

11. COLLECT
What do we collect
and where from?
Collecting is the core activity of a Creative Sponge
What, how and where?
- What do we collect ?

12. What are we collecting?
It’s not just ‘Inspiration’
It’s not just ‘Ideas’
It’s FUEL
All this visual collateral is nothing without a catalyst to kickstart the creative process.

13. " Things I’ve collected always
have relevance at some point
later on"
Georgie Bean, Interior Stylist
The temptation is to only collect the things that interest you, but this is will hold you back.
Collect even the things you don’t like.

14. Sources to collect from...

15. ©Khoi Vinh
observing life

16. Doodles from your head
Doodles and sketches

17. Book Covers

18. Magazine layouts

20. Found Typography

21. Images taken directly from the internet

22. Related: comic | cute | decorative | funny
Related: comic | cute | inline | outline | sassy | shadow
Let the creative juices come to you - for free. Sign up on Type Foundries mailing lists, and
they will send you regular doses without you having to lift a finger

23. T-shirt companies like Threadless

24. Packaging

26. clothing labels and tags
How about more obscure items like clothing labels?

27. Leaflet racks are an all-you-can-eat buffet

28. Experiment with your camera

29. Experimentation
Try taking pictures through glass

30. ...OK, you get the idea...

31. ...except websites!
That is, everything except the thing you’re working on. Avoid sub-conscious duplication

32. CATALOG
What is your
‘trusted system’?
Just like ‘GTD’, the creative sponge needs their own trusted system.
You can actually have more than one system!

33. " Designers are magpie-like
creatures. If we see a style or
approach that we enjoy we’ll
absorb some of it, sometimes
consciously, sometimes not"
Michael Johnson, Johnson Banks

34. YOU
R
HEAD
!
Your head is the first place you store stuff

35. Analog Spongery

36. Sketchbook
Simon Collison keeps beautiful sketchbooks

37. The blog “Print & Pattern” keeps meticulous ring binders full of the resources she finds.

38. …or a box
I just bung things in a box

39. Digital Spongery
Your maybe more likely to use digital spongery

40. I used to use iPhoto a lot.

41. But now there are special apps like Littlesnapper

42. Personally, I’m using Evernote the most at the moment

43. Sources
Collectors
Cameraphones are one of the best collectors! Material is collected by, and synced
between, desktop and mobile client.

44. I can often remember text in an image, which is quicker to find than tagging images

45. Social Spongery
Designers collections need not be shut away in sketchbooks and boxes, but can be collected,
tagged and sorted, ready for everyone’s use. I love this kind of open source design collecting.

46. FFFFound!

47. IMG Spark

48. Ember

49. Flickr is still king

50. ‘No interpretative dancing with explosives please’

52. CREATE
How do we use
these collections
to create stuff?

53. Modern Art is rife with collections turned into new work.

54. Eduardo Paolazzi and Peter Blake are just 2 examples of artists who collect things and apply
them directly to create new art.

55. The Fear !
How do get past the blank sheet of paper?

56. " Collecting things stimulates
the brain. It helps you think of
something fresher. "
Wieden + Kennedy
Collection itself is a stimulant for ideas

57. The Fear !
But sometimes not enough

58. It needs a further catalyst

59. CREATIVE CATALYSTS
• Deadlines!
• Change of environment
• Go to Bed
• Peace & Quiet (go for a wee)
• Take a shower

60. Mind-mapping

61. Cheese is an excellent catalyst of course

62. Critique it!
But lets look at examples of catalysts that directly use our collections.

63. Original 2012 bid logo

64. Final 2012 logo

65. But are these really any better? Why?

66. Moodboards
But lets look at examples of catalysts that directly use our collections.

67. I can has
moodboard?
kthxbye!
Moodboards have a bad rep, mainly because of this man

68. A Moodboard
This is where your collections of design collateral really pays off. Once assembled, common
colours, styles and type emerge, such as the reds and royal blues here

69. Another Moodboard
However, ask someone else, and you could get a completely different feel / outlook - green
and blue

70. Why Moodboards?
1. Concentrates on the
concept/mood
2. Stimulates conversation with
stakeholders
3. Quick to make
4.Clients can make their own!

71. Spot Design
Patterns

72. “ Reuse, recycle, but don’t
reinvent the wheel unless
necessary”
Brian Christiansen, UI Engineering
Design is not always about originality

73. Anyone that subscribes to Chris Messina’s Flickr Stream will know that he likes posting
screenshots. A LOT of screenshots. It’s hard to know why, until you take a step back and see
the bigger picture.

74. It’s a collection of design patterns

75. Pattern Tap is an excellent resource for patterns

76. Sampling colours

77. =

78. =

79. Finally, a couple of my own
examples...

80. + =
Hicksdesign logo
From a painting seen in an art gallery, and a button configuration on a camera, to logo

81. =
open doors student site
From Threadless T Shirt to Website.

82. " Soak up everything, you
never know when you're
going to need it"
Jon Hicks

83. SOAK IT UP!
http://delicious.com/jonhicks/sponge
http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/
be-a-creative-sponge-2