5 Creativity-boosting New Year Resolutions (you don’t need any others!)
Forget the New Year Resolutions about the diet, keeping fit, being more confident, finally reading War and Peace and all the others – if you decide to take up five […]
#noticing: or ways to boost your creativity with social media
Above: #noticing the Observer Building, Hastings, UK If you want a golden rule … [the] true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details […]
Ladybird – measuring life
Above: Shopping with Mother, Harry Wingfield, © Ladybird Books Ltd, 1958 In the way that many cultures and religions track the passage of time via rituals at specific times, so I tracked my childhood life, and continue to do so today, from what I learned about the passage of time from […]
Eat Something Different
I was first set the creative challenge to Eat Something Different a few weeks ago. The aim is to eat something unusual or to eat it in a different way. Small regular problem-solving tasks that stretch the imagination are good for rehearsing your creativity. So as I only had about […]
Listen to Something Different
As part of our ongoing creative challenges I set the activity to listen to something different. Each person participating chooses two pieces of music under 5 minutes long. One piece should be fairly accessible and the other challenging, enigmatic or just plain weird. The purpose of the activity is to […]
Getting Ready for Season of Festivals
Now is a good time to start thinking about sending out cards and self-promotion items to would-be customers and clients. Whether you want to drum up design work for yourself of any other kind of business it would be a nice idea to make an eye-catching greetings card for Christmas, […]
Shoe Tower: Creative Problem Solving Activity
A fun hands-on problem solving activity that will help to get creative juices flowing is to build a shoe tower. This weekend at GDP headquarters, as part of a creativity-building activity session, we were prompted by Dr Jack Matson of CIC MOOC to have a go at building our own shoe tower to test […]
Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK
You can trust the British Library in London to put on a big, important exhibition, and Comics Unmasked was no exception. The already iconic poster by Jamie Hewlett is above. But I left with the thought that I don’t really like comics very much! I am interested in them, like […]
Pick Me Up 2014
Where might you find giant white cats, embroidered sailors, typographic woolly scarves, loads of skulls, skate boards, decorated wooden spoons, printing presses and over-priced “my toddler could do that” collage? Yes, of course, it is Somerset House’s yearly display of the graphic arts, Pick Me Up. As always this year was fun […]
The Blog is Back!
Apologies, dear followers, about the several month’s break in blogging. We have been busy creating new projects, including a few apps, the long awaited On Stage (scenography with a way to explore a book of your choice) and our brand new Arts & Issues series, which looks at…erm…the arts and issues! […]
the graphic design project 