The Right Answer
Tuesday, February 14, 1995 - 12:15pm
The pressure to produce creativity eased over the last week. Actually, the traditional form of artistic creativity for the brochure artwork ended more than a week ago. The type of creativity demanded by the work recently was more in the form of creative problem solving, trying to piece together solutions to production problems.
Is this kind of creativity different from the other kind? The process isn't really so different. I gathered the known facts about the problem, not unlike the info-gathering/message-defining stage in the design process. Then I match these up with my internal toolbox of techniques and past experiences. This is akin to the tallying of available graphics and techniques that I do while considering possible designs. Where the problem's solution isn't obvious, I went in and played with different techniques, using trial and error to find the best answer. This corresponds to the trial and error, moving-design-elements- around-the-screen-and-printing-proofs stage of my design process. Once an acceptable, working solution was found, then I went ahead and fully implemented it, cleaning up the finer details. Again, this tracks the design process very closely.
One big difference - the Right Answer was always evident in the problem solving exercise. The problem went away or it didn't. On the design side, that point is not always clear cut. There is always an open question of whether the design is Good Enough. Improvements can always be made, other variations can always be tried. Often, the pressure of deadlines is one of the biggest deciders of what is adequate.
[ Out of Balance ]
author: Gerry
Manacsa
copyright 1996