(David Doty is editor and publisher of ThePage, a Macintosh-only desktop publishing journal. This article is from issue #53 of ThePage, October 1991)
Much of what we do in desktop publishing is often cut-and-driedmoving elements around a page to make them fit. But is our fascination with the skill and technique involved in production distracting us from the very act of designing interesting layouts and graphics? The power of computer technology is so mesmerizing that it subverts us into thinking it can do it all.
This tendency to rely on the technology usually results in commonplace solutions. Im not suggesting that every effort must break new ground: rather that the way we organize and illustrate a publication inevitably requires at least a measure of imagination.
The problem is that imagination is often in short supply.
Tight deadlines, slender budgets, excessive client or job demands, distractions, and personal feelings of inadequacy operate against our taking the extra time to apply a little imagination. The solution is to make the time, and to prepare for those occasions when youll have to come up with an idea.
While theres no panaceano magic wand that can be waved over the monitor that will turn an ordinary cover design into a brilliant one or a humdrum layout into a masterpiecethere are techniques that will help the desktop publisher, or anyone doing creative work, to come up with ideas.
What it takes, first of all, is an understanding of how the mind works when creating something and sorting out problems that must be solved.
The creative process
Ill spare you the mumbo-jumbo about creativity that you can find in the literature. Nonetheless, there are some specific stages that are common to most creative efforts.
Identification: Recognition of the problem
Analysis: Breaking down the relevant parts
Incubation: Letting the subconscious do the work
Insight: Making the creative connections
Application: Putting the idea to work
Verification: Determining whether the idea really did work
Thats all well and good, you say, but those things dont help me come up with ideas.
Okay, here are a few concrete ways to get things going and to keep the mind operating creatively.
Build a personal library of ideas, graphics, and phrases
Its too much to ask the mind to come up with an idea without some prior input. Almost without exception, the most creative people Ive met make it a practice to store images and ideas, verbal and graphic, in some fashion. Whether its sketches, notebooks, lists, clutter, databases, or whatever, these collections seem to foster creativity. They not only serve as reference, but the very act of gathering reference material provides considerable creative impetusforcing you to look for new things.
Why not use the computer for storing these collected images and ideas? Of course you can do that (given sufficient disk space), but the very exercise of writing in a notebook, pinning something to the wall, or sketching out ideas, brings out different kinds of ideas than the more abstract use of a computer. Somehow the physical act is more useful to the brain. In addition, its a lot more fun (and often more expeditious) to pull out a sketchbook to make a note or look for ideas than to sort through files and folders on the Mac, open the document, look through that, and then decide what to do. The mechanics of getting ideas down are not so obstructive to your train of thought when you use a sketchpad or notebook.
However, the computer can be used creatively for just the sort of stimulus we need to jog the imagination. For example, you can use screen savers as a method of creative intrusion. Im not talking about the standard flying toasters, bright geometric shapes, and other ready-made visuals, but using the slide show capabilities of some of them (After Dark, for instance) that allow you to put in your own graphics. Using a drawing program, Ive put a series of simple page layout sketches and shapes into After Dark. Each file is only 2-10K in size, so a lot can fit without taking up much space. As I sit back to gather my thoughts, the images fade in and out, letting me weigh their value, change them, or eliminate them from the stream.
Another approach is to set your Mac so it starts up in your word processor with an ideas file. Add to the list regularly, but be careful not to over-structure it by making it into an outlineyou should take advantage of the serendipitous nature of lists, bouncing around from one idea to another as you review and add to the list. Only when you have a substantial number of ideas in one category should you break them out into a list or section of their own.
Give the eye a treat
Were surrounded by visual stimuli. But without recognizing them for what they are, the creative potential is completely wasted. Force yourself to focus on the interesting visual things around you, then analyze why you think theyre interesting. Television commercials and station promos employ some of the most sophisticated graphics readily available. Walk along a rack of magazines in a newsstand and look at the covers. Which ones are interesting, aside from their content? The displays in book and record stores are also stimulating. Even newspapers are becoming more visually interesting. (Has your local paper changed its visual stance recently?)
A visit to the art department of your library, sketchbook in hand, should yield mounds of material. Art galleries, poster shops, even T-shirt stores can keep the creative juices flowing.
At all these places, make mental notes (or better yet, sketches) of visual arrangements, graphic effects, handling of type, shapes in the image, use of colors, and what it is that strikes you about the overall design. Is it interesting because of the color, the design, the subject, or a combination of these?
Build on experience
Were all products of our backgrounds. And our backgrounds are all richer than we think. Look back to your interests as a child. We all had our favorite activities, whether stamp collecting, playing a musical instrument, building model airplanes, studying dinosaurs, reading fairy tales, or whatever.
If youre lucky enough to have saved some of the drawings you did as a child, examine them. Look at the vigor and intuitiveness we were all able to express before we learned how to draw something. What a shame that we cant return to the freshness of vision we once had.
For creative people, these early activities are often just the beginning of a continuum that extends throughout our lives and often manifests itself productively later on. As we mature, we expand on previous interests and find new ones, adding more variety to the mix of graphic experience. And theyre all fodder for the visual ideas we search for when were in our prime.
Expand your graphic horizons
One advantage of designers with design school experience is having developed a visual vocabularya working knowledge of how line, pattern, value, and color work with shapes and type. But even the most experienced graphic artists must constantly improve on this vocabulary through new visual experiences and experimentation. Professional designers constantly observe the world around them, experiencing and storing images and ideas for future use.
Thats how the cover illustrations were done. I started with the simple outline of a T-shirt, then poked into the corners of my mental warehouse for ideas that could be applied to them. They didnt all come in a flood, fully developed, of course, but are the results of some good initial efforts yielding about half of them, with the others added later as ideas occurred. Often, one idea would lead to anotherand then another. Sometimes an idea would arrive fully laden with gifts, other times I had to struggle to make it work.
Learn to see with the minds eye
Visualizing how a solution might work out is a great exercise, and one often bypassed by designers using the computer. The computer certainly helps to explore alternative approaches in a comparatively short time, but closing your eyes and looking at the outcome of an idea will develop creative and visual powers faster than constant dependence on the computer.
One way to get your visual associations going is to think about how graphic concepts could be applied to a problem. Here is a list of such visual ideas:
highlighted edges overlaid areas curved against straight
large vs. small contrasting tones folded shapes
variegated fills stacked forms tangent curves
Look around, find an object, and try to define some aspect of it in such basic ways. Could those visual concepts be applied to a project youre working on? Could they add to the variety or vigor of your next job?
Look to other disciplines
Architecture, interior design, fashion design, and product design all influence (and are influenced by) graphic design. Contemporary architecture, with its subtle color combinations, rich mixture of materials, revealed structure, and even its use of exterior lighting, offers many ideas for the alert designer. Could a brochure design incorporate some of the structural ideas in architecture, for instance? Could the cover reflect the bright colors, bold shapes, and highly charged patterns of casual clothing? Or should the whole piece have the look and feel one sees in the openness and relationships of good interior designs?
Ask yourself provocative questions
A good way to get yourself out of a rut is to ask yourself the right kind of questions. Keeping the problem in mind ask, Does this make me laugh? What would happen if I put all these (words, typefaces, graphics) into a pot and shook them uphow would they juxtapose? How would Einstein have approached this? Or Leonardo da Vinci? How might this problem have been addressed by an artisan in the Middle Ages? Or a metaphysical design consultant in the year 2025?
Such an approach can work well for general problems. But, if youre dealing with a specific problem of, say, page layout, there are more focused questions you can ask yourself: What would happen if I put this headline over there? Or at the bottom of the page? What about making the type larger? Not just large, but gigantic? Could a letter bleed off the page? Or make it so big that only the center is visible? If you can get into the habit of doing this often, youll be able to make that leap in graphic insight.
Struggling with illustration problems? Perhaps its because youre looking for too literal a solutionone that conveys the detail rather than the whole idea of what youre trying to show. Forget, for the moment, all the words in the story, but ask yourself what the story is about. What is the fundamental message? What kinds of people are you speaking to? What will make them see the point? Whats the most visual aspect of the message? How could that be illustrated?
When dealing with page layout problems, ask yourself what would happen if there were lots of leading between lines of text. What would happen if the headline were very large and extended across a spread with the text columns hung from that? What if, instead of a conventional drop cap, the cap letter was the first letter of the headline, rather than the body text, and stuck down into the text? Can you devise a good alternative to bullets?
Keep your mind active
Get into the habit of working on several projects at the same time. I know, its hard to avoid anyway, but working back and forth from one project to another, even if some of them are only personal ones, can often lead to ideas for both. Theres an old saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. The same holds for your own assignmentsyou may get more accomplished creatively by working on several projects concurrently. Another helpful practice is to work on the creative phase of one project while completing the production aspects of another.
Talk with a friend
Its all too easy to stay glued to the computer, trying to solve a problem through brute force. Occasionally it works, but sometimes it helps to get another perspective or a more objective viewpoint. Discuss the problem with a friend or colleague. Often, all it takes to loosen up your thinking is to articulate the problem and a solution or two may appear as you talk, or your colleague may make suggestions that get your own ideas going. Brainstorming can also offer great results.
Try to break big problems into smaller ones
This is a good general problem-solving technique. Focus on just one of the elements or tasks rather than trying to tackle the whole thing at once. If youre working on the layout of a page, break it into component partsheadline treatment and position, number and width of columns, choices for sizing and positioning of graphics. If the page doesnt have a graphic, ask yourself if it would benefit from one. What kind of graphic would work? Could the element also be used to help structure the page? Remember, from a layout point of view, the idea is to modulate the spacenot simply to plunk something down, but to make the elements sing in harmony, yet with amplitude. Build from there.
Get your subconscious to do the work
Its easy to forget that the subconscious can be an important part of the creative process. When solving small problems, sometimes simply sitting back and thinking about something else can help induce a solution. Or skip that part of the problem temporarily and work on something else. Its okay to relax and let your mind wander for a few moments (its okay by mealthough I cant speak for your boss or clients). If meditation is your thing, this may be the time for it. The point is to put your mind, even if only for a moment, into neutral and coast. That will clear out more cobwebs than any amount of forcing.
For problems of broader scope, sleep on the question: Ponder it before you go to bed (but dont dwell on it, or you may never get to sleep). Frequently, a solution will be there when you wake up.
Capitalize on the happy accident
Manys the time that a successful design has arisen out of a failed attempt at something else. Thats exactly the process that occurred with the face T-shirt in the cover illustration. I started out to tear the T-shirt with an irregular outline. As I pulled one of the handles from the right side into the center, it struck me that the resulting sideways V resembled the mouth of a face in profile. Face...eyes...hair, and the thought, if not the drawing, was done.
Explore alternatives
This is one of the designers most powerful allies. Ive said it before and dont mind saying it again: First ideas arent always the best. A few days reflection on what seems at the time to be the greatest idea in the world often shows that a little polishing, or even a fresh approach, can vastly improve things.
Dont wait until you have a publication completely finished to consider alternatives. The most productive time for exploration is during the concept stage, when ideas tend to come faster anyway.
And dont critique your ideas too soon. Develop several first, then compare them. Which is best? Why is it the best? Can some aspect of one be incorporated into another? What would make each idea better?
Just do it
Its also good to learn to design off the top of your head. Just sit down and work with whatever pops into your head. Let all the accumulated ideas do the work for you. Of course, this intuitive approach doesnt always work, and may not work for everybody, but its a good practice anyway. When it does work, its especially good for small projects such as announcements, birthday cards, and so on.
Confused?
Good. Some confusion is often part of the creative process. But the activity of dealing with the information and letting the mind do the organizing is what may well make you better at what you doand how you do it.
(ThePage is published 10 times a year. Subscription price is $65 per year. Write to PageWorks, Box 14493, Chicago, IL 60614. 312 349-1200, Visa and MasterCard accepted)
