Literary bondage
Get the handcuffs on and let the creativity out.
Since I started storytelling, my principal focus has been creative variety and how not to get stuck in a rut. We have a brilliant formula for presentations at my design studio, Buffalo 7. If you’ve been to any of our “Improve your skills…” events, you’ll know that our presentations are like movies. They have a clear beginning, middle, and end, and are interspersed with villains (challenges) and heroes (solutions).
But what does creativity have to do with mathematics? Having a formula for creativity seems counterintuitive. Surely creativity is born of freedom and imagination? That is why humans can create great works of art and literature, whereas robots and computers are yet to steal our jobs. When I started to look into this, I found that the solution may be hidden within the problem itself. Allow me to explain.
Has anyone heard of the Oulipo? Nope, not the delicious fruity iced treat. The much less tasty group of writers and mathematicians founded in the 1960s. The founding idea of the Oulipo was that language is always limited by something. Grammar itself is a set of rules we all blindly follow. So, why not play with those restrictions and investigate the possibilities of writing when composed under a different set of structural constraints?
For example, followers of the Oulipo might write a piece of poetry, or even an entire book, without the letter e, this is known as a Lipogram.
Another popular Oulipo technique would be to translate an existing piece of text by changing all the nouns to the noun found seven nouns later in their dictionary.
For example, my favourite passage from ‘On the road’ originally reads like this:
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
Using the Oulipo’s N+7 strategy, it would become:
“Our battered summations were piled on the sight again; we had longer weans to go. But no matter, the roam is life.”
And that’s just using my dictionary; a different version would create a different result. And this highlights one of the interesting ideas to come from the Oulipo principles. The idea of alternative possibilities. While this passage could be considered complete in itself, it also hints at all the other work that could come from just this one added constraint. It creates a domino effect of ideas.
But the idea I want to focus on for this post is the technique of using restrictions as idea leverage. A problem-solving exercise, if you will.
Imagine writing a short story compiled entirely from the example sentences found in dictionaries. Not a single word can be plucked from your own mind, only cultivated from previous text.
Now, imagine writing an entire book full of these short stories. That’s what designer and illustrator Jez Burrows did. He wrote ‘Dictionary Stories’ from sentences found in a dozen different dictionaries, put together to have narrative, characters, and even conversation.
This is an example paragraph from just one of the 295 pages. Each sentence from a different location, stitched together.
His process involved a lot of spreadsheets, which most of you might think to be a creativity killer, but as an ex-Project Manager, I can see the crossover between creativity and organisation. Having set himself this challenge, Burrows was forced to let go of his usual design process and attack the problem differently. He had to think laterally and push his creative prejudices aside. What he wrote was still a piece of literature, it’s still a creative pursuit, but the journey that brought him there was entirely novel.
How does any of this help my designers at the studio? Because that is ultimately my purpose in life. We all have a creativity crutch. The storytelling team get too caught up in this idea of one solid structure and are at danger of churning out presentation after presentation that follows this formula. What’s the damage? No two clients are ever likely to put their decks next to each other and compare, so why should it matter? It should matter to us, as creatives. We should be striving to always develop, always tackle each client’s challenges and form a bespoke solution. Easier said than done though, right? Because, naturally, every client comes with their own set of restrictions. They needed the finished presentation yesterday, or they don’t have the budget to buy your best ideas, or their version of PowerPoint seems to have been found in an elderly relative’s loft along with a few centuries of dust.
Adding your own restraints to this mix may seem masochistic as this stage, but there is method behind the masochism. If you design outside of your comfort zone, and practice problem solving, you will become comfortable in this discomfort. You will be ready the next time a client enters with a caveat. Whatever they throw at you, won’t compare to anything you’ve done to yourself.
It’s time to ask yourself, what is your crutch?
Do you feel most comfortable in Photoshop? Perhaps try designing your next piece in Sketch or, my personal favourite on name alone, GIMP. Alternatively, developers, you could rebuild previous presentations in Prezi or Keynote, and get hands-on experience with those programs, before they crop up in real projects.
Do you tend to comfort yourself in colour? So did Marylou Faure in her early career. It was only when she limited herself to just a few select colours, that she produced her signature style.
But, alternatively, it could be a signature style that is holding you back. Phil Hansen is an artist who developed an incredible pointillist technique while at University. Following an injury, he was left without the ability to continue producing this work. At first, he believed his career to be over before it had begun, but he soon realised that he could use his new wobbly lines to his advantage, creating pieces that were unusual and still beautiful. He even started to set himself more limitations, such as creating large-scale murals for just 80 cents. Hansen said: “I ended up having an approach to creativity that completely changed my artistic horizons.” He had to adjust his thinking, but this allowed his creativity to explode.
Mondrian recognised how restrictions could enhance creativity as well, setting himself the challenge of only using 90-degree angles and primary colours. When you’re next designing, perhaps incorporate a background pattern or frame an image using this same one-angled constraint?
One constraint that we often can’t escape is time. However, the more we can practice relying on gut instinct instead of careful consideration, the better. Professors Klebahn and Utley of Stanford University challenge themselves to build various technological prototypes in 90% of the time it should take. By continually pushing themselves in this way, they have to come up with smarter, more efficient solutions than they would if they had the luxury of time.
It could just be a matter of brainstorming differently. I prefer to take time alone to process a brief and consider all the possibilities before discussing my chosen route with anyone else. However, I know this is because my brain comes up with about five ridiculous answers before it ventures into anything close to the solution, so I’m just trying to save my embarrassment of sharing these prototype ideas with real humans. However, by forcing myself into that discomfort zone, and immediately bouncing ideas off someone else, yes I may say something silly, but I may also blurt out something I wouldn’t have considered by myself. Just switching up from the norm will make your brain work harder.
Maybe you’ve crafted your comfort zone in a 16:9 format? Next time you have downtime, try designing a PowerPoint presentation that is one long continuous scroll and could be viewed on a mobile phone. Setting different spatial constraints will change how you tackle a problem as well. It’s all about resetting your thinking, rather than going for what is comfortable.
When thinking about your crutch, it is essential to be honest with yourself. You can’t be the person who “gives up” broccoli for Lent when everyone knows you’ve got a hardcore dru…m addiction. The point is to challenge yourself, so take a good hard look at your habits, and unscrew the stabilisers. I think you’ll be astounded at your abilities once you are both strictly restrained and completely free.
