So I've talking about that the secret ingredient is creativity. But what is creativity? How do you guys think about creativity? >> Well, this gets back to probably how disciplined I like to be with things, but I think that this idea of just wild creativity for creativity's sake, this actually can be very non-productive. You have to have a basis and some discipline and process first. >> My experience in working with students on creative projects was that they tend to think, it's like the muse coming to pay them a visit. >> Yeah. >> And that's very unreliable, and it's really fickle. It's always based on, in my way of thinking, in process. I have a problem, it's a design problem. I want to be creative, I want to do beautiful work. But I don't wait for great ideas to come. Because they typically don't. What I need to do is start with list making and understanding the problem at hand and starting to work within a process. That's what my design course is about, is talking about that process and understanding our palette and the blank canvas. We can go to work right away. Do creative work, but work within parameters. >> But I don't understand, or let me play devil's advocate here a little bit. If it's entirely mechanical, list making, how do you be original in a list? >> It shows up, it simply shows up. If you don't start with some type of process, you don't- >> But Dave, by saying it simply shows up sounds like, Dave Underwood happens to be a really creative guy. >> Okay. >> And it's going to show up. I mean, what do you think? How does it, how do we get to some sense of when you're creative? >> Right, right. And it does, it has, this is a really interesting question because this is very hard. And I would think of myself as a pretty creative person. And I think about how I teach literature and how I teach my students to be creative with their intellectual process. And a lot of times it's about juxtaposing two things that you don't think are related or three things, writing, design and presentation. And you juxtapose them. And you look for the similarities. And all of a sudden these relationships begin to come out that you didn't see before. And that's the moment of creativity. But expressing them with some discipline I think is really important. Because otherwise, you can't get your ideas across your audience? >> I to push the idea of process and having a formula because so many people tell themselves they can't design because, I'm not creative. And that's I think why I've really adopted this style of teaching design is because we're all more creative than we give ourselves credit for, we just don't understand that process. It's like give a guitar to someone who's never played a guitar. Well, it'll be creative but it's unlistenable. >> Well then how do you know when you're unlistenable? When your website is awful? You think you've been creative, or you think your sentences are really smart because they have a lot of adjectives. >> [LAUGH] >> And that's indicating that you're creative. >> Yeah, yeah. >> How do you know? We've talked about fear and self-censoring. How do you know when you should self-censor yourself because you're not being creative, you're being vulgar, and how do you know when you're really being creative? >> Time and distance. And a second pair of eyes. >> I was going to come back to that. >> And learning to be a critical viewer. >> Yeah. >> If think if I were to show you guys a blog design or a web design or an ad for a magazine, that was really awful, you would know it. And when I teach graphic design at Baldwin County Jail my students can see that design immediately. But when it's their own work they have a harder time, and I think it's learning to see your work in the broader context of design. >> In a way, I want to come back to the watchwords of this specialization, clarity, structure, revision. And I think that our discussion of creativity has hit all those things, that if you look at a piece, a website, and you ask yourself, is this clear? Well then you know it's not really creative. And what Dave was saying about getting some distance and time is really the process of revision. And that's what leads to an understanding of whether you're saying something in an interesting way or not, but it's also what you said about process in the very beginning. That if you don't master the structure, if you don't understand the structure, if you don't understand some of the problems behind what you're trying to solve, then really how can you make anything that's not just a mish mash? >> And how can you repeat success? That's a huge part of it- >> That's a really critical point. >> You may stumble across something that's good- >> Once. [LAUGH] >> That you're proud of. >> Yeah. >> But if you have to do it again next Wednesday, you better have a process in place. And that's what all designers understand, that's foundational to being a good designer is process. >> The thing about creativity is it's not magic. It's not just inspiration. It has to do with process. It has to do with self-reflection with revision and with understanding why you're trying to communicate what you're communicating.
