About

What makes us creative? How do you constantly develop fresh creative ideas, year after year? Do you slip into patterns that make you less creative, relying on solutions that you know have worked in the past? And if so, what can you do to become more creative?

After working in the design industry for over 25 years and running my own design company for 17 years, these were the questions I had started to ask myself. Running a small studio, I get involved with every aspect of the business and sometimes creativity is not top of my mind. As creative director, I am constantly pushing other designers to develop the ideas, to make their ideas as good as they can be. But then comes everything else. New Business, Financials, IT, HR and so on. And after spending so much time on everything other than design and helping everyone else, I felt there was a danger of becoming rusty – of slipping into old solutions. Of being less creative.  

In an effort to understand my own situation and to explore ways to be more creative, I needed to do something to provide some answers. Something to fire the imagination. Get me thinking about design. But what?

Like many designers, I work best with a project. An aim, a framework and a deadline. I needed something I would enjoy and something to learn. And as so often happens, inspiration came away from the desk.

Inspiration
I like jazz. I’m not a musician, but I enjoy the music and it was while sitting at a couple of jazz concerts, I started thinking about how to express the music visually. The concerts were very different. One, a large band, upbeat, loud, expressive and fun. The other far more intense, thoughtful. 

Walking to work shortly after, an idea started to develop in my mind. To develop a series of posters based on different musicians over a set period of time. How about 100 posters, over 100 days, each one on a different musician? 

This idea would enable me to discover more jazz, learn more about the musicians, whilst being creative. By repeating the same exercise over an extended period of time, it would enable me to see if I was slipping into those patterns and when I was being more creative.

100 jazz artists…
First I needed a list – the top 100 jazz artists. But on starting a search, I came across lots of top 100s. So I pulled out ten and created my own by listing the number of times each musician or group appeared and then using this to compile the list. Miles Davis appeared the most number of times, so he became number one, John Coltrane was next, so he became number two and so on.

With this list (see full list below), I then set about researching each musician and pulling out basic information – full name, instruments, two or three key recordings or albums. And ensuring I had at least one piece of music from each musician. This information became the standard copy for each poster. Knowing I would have a limited amount of time each day, I set up everything I needed for each artist with the standard copy. 

A creative brief
Next I needed a creative brief. I kept it very simple – a visual, graphic response to the artist and the music. And no photography. Photographs would make it too easy and I knew I would be influenced by the album covers I had already seen, so many of which utilised photography. Keeping it graphic or typographic would be simpler and make it more challenging. Where possible I would try and always use a different typeface for the main heading. 

Each day I would choose an artist at random – this way I would concentrate on one artist at a time. The aim would be to design a poster, pick the best solution (even if I wasn’t happy with it) and record my thinking about the process in a book. It was more about the process than the poster.

So, first of July 2013 I started, finishing in October. The time I had available for the project each day varied, so I decided to make a note of the hours it took to develop each idea. 

So, what did I learn?

1. It was good fun.
Learning about each musician, their lives, their music. By systematically working my way through this list, it helped me discover far more music than I would normally do. It served as a great break in the day. Took me away from the usual routine of life that we so often slip into without realising it. 

2. I was slipping into patterns for solving problems.
Certain ideas kept cropping up. When it was late in the day and I had little time, I would resort to tired and tested solutions. Rarely were they ever the most pleasing results. Recognising this helped push me into ways of developing other ideas.

3. Listen to the music.
This may sound obvious, but often we get carried away with getting on with the design and we forget that good research is essential. One day, when I had little time, I made the mistake of not listening to the music. The next day, when I finally did listen to a few tracks, I realised the typeface I had chosen wasn’t right – I felt it didn’t reflect the music. 

4. Take a break.
When struggling with an idea or design, the best thing was to just take a break and do something completely different. A little time away from the problem, doing something as simple as taking a walk often cleared the mind and led to the best solution or at least helped move the idea forward.

5. Play.
An important part of creativity and not to be under-estimated. Giving the time to explore around a subject, seeing what might happen and not worrying about failing, always led to a different way of approaching the problem. 

6. Starting from a different point got me away from tired thinking.
This could be something as simple as trying a different typeface or using a set of colours I would not normally put together. 

7. Look for connections.
Reading up on each musician, I began by looking for any connections and this could be anything from the music, name, and life history. These connections often provided the initial idea, the starting point. The artist’s background and music then helped bring the idea to life.

8. Concentrate on the distinctive.
With so many musicians, to differentiate each one I tried to concentrate on what made them distinctive – the one thing that could only relate to them. This could be their name, a style of playing or an album.

9. Sketch first.
Listening to the music and sketching helped quickly formulate different approaches and concentrate on the idea.

10. Give it time and persevere.
Whilst more hours does not always lead to more creativity – giving time to explore different ways of expressing the idea did make a difference. There was not always the time with this project to spend hours crafting the details, but when time was available it always made a difference.

The posters shown in this website are the ones selected each day, shown in the order they were designed.