Ideas communication

"It really helps if you can communicate your ideas. I work with so many different types of people – people from all over the world, people without a design background – so for meetings or phonecalls, it's key. Your ideas should speak for themselves, but people love to hear the story behind them." British designer Paul Cocksedge

Ive got an idea

'What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but then the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring. There is an idea which is solitary, fragile and tentative and doesn’t have form.

What we’ve found here [at Apple] is that it then becomes a conversation, although remains very fragile.

When you see the most dramatic shift is when you transition from an abstract idea to a slightly more material conversation. But when you made a 3D model, however crude, you bring form to a nebulous idea, and everything changes - the entire process shifts. It galvanises and brings focus from a broad group of people. It’s a remarkable process.'

Jonathan Ive, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/sir-jonathan-ive-the-iman-cometh-7562170.html

Sinovate

If China is to flourish, argues The Economist, its manufacturers must move up the value chain. Rather than bolting together sophisticated products designed elsewhere, they need to do more design work themselves. Taking a leaf out of Germany’s book, they need to make products with higher margins and offer services to complement them: Innovate or slow down.

Art and/or design?

If art is a completely free uncensored platform to imaginatively explore whatever the artist wants without fear of censure, what is then design? Is it that design is an imaginative yet purposeful exploration with regards to the particular needs of a situation or person? Is then the difference between art and design that design is utilitarian in a way that art is not? To make the distinction matters because educators in art and design need to be clear about their aims, objectives, curriculum content and pedagogy.

Myths, truths, and fashion

On the Fashion System (1967) Roland Barthes says: 'Contrary to the myth of
improvisation, of caprice, of fantasy, of free creativity, we can see that fashion
is strongly coded. It is ruled by combination in which there is a finite reserve
of elements and certain rules of change. The whole set of fashion features for
each year is found in the collection of features which has its own rules and
limits, like grammar'. Now, doesn't Barthes' provocation contain a grain of truth
for most design disciplines?

Ideators cum entrepreneurs

Ideators share traits with entrepreneurs. Both see an opportunity and don’t feel constrained from pursuing it because they lack resources. Indeed, ideators, like entrepreneurs, are used to making do with few resources.

Ideas and collaboration

"The most important thing in business is to be good at delegation and employ the best executives", says Richard Branson, the media entrepreneur. That may hold true for the creative industry too. That is, the realisation of design ideas calls for team work and collaboration employing the best designers and makers.