Typography

28 November 2014 Unknown 0 Comments

I want to introduce my favorite areas of study and how they relate to our exploration of creativity and the creative process. The next couple of posts will be about each area.

First is typography.

I don't know exactly why I like typography; I'm no good at it, but it intrigues me. I know it started when I learned that Steve Jobs (one of my heroes) loved typography. It's just grown from there.

I love how typography is about the unwritten communication behind the written communication. It tries to add emotion or context to what is written. At its best, it tries to fade away and be invisible to the reader, but it can't. There is no way to write without writing in a style and so it implicitly sends unsaid information to the reader.

It's like body language. Whatever you are doing with your body as you speak—even if you are trying to do nothing—you are sending unspoken messages to your listeners. Maybe I like typography because I'm an introvert and I'm not proficient at body language so I'm trying to make up for it...

At any rate, it's easy to wander with typography. There's so many variables and so many choices for each. It's easy to try 100 fonts and still not decide on a good one. 

Maybe that's because I'm still learning the rules of typography. I use it for typesetting my self-published books which I'll talk more about later. I obsess over every detail of the text, but I don't know very well what effect I'm having on the reader because I'm new to the art.

This idea of wandering around to learn the rules is maybe the whole point of wandering, at least in the early stages of creativity. Maybe a veteran artist doesn't need to wander as much because she knows what effect she'll have on the audience. Maybe a veteran artist can see the end of her creation whereas to a novice there is no end (like in my picture a few posts ago). Maybe.

At any rate, for this blog I obsessed over the typography. Would someone who knows better give me some pointers in the comments because I'm not sure how good it actually looks and what effect I'm having on my one audience member.

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Engineering needs wandering

25 November 2014 Unknown 0 Comments

I'm a software engineer. It is so fun and challenging. It's like doing puzzles all day. An engineer breaks problems or goals down into manageable pieces and then creates a solution in a systematic fashion.

I once told one of my coworkers that the same kind of creativity is used to write a novel as is to write code to create a feature. He disagreed. He explained that there aren't many right ways to program something. There is a definite solution. Programming is very linear.

I still don't know if I agree with him or not. Programming is very linear, but there certainly is more than one way (most of the time) to accomplish a goal. There may be better and worse ways to accomplish something, depending on the other constraints, but there's some sort of creativity involved to figure out the best.

So, if art looks something like this:

then engineering is something like this:


But the thing is, you can deliver a hundred features that are the done in the "best" way possible, but that doesn't mean anyone cares about them. And over time, unless there is some wandering about to find out what is meaningful to users, the engineering will be pointless.

And maybe engineering doesn't even factor into this at all. Maybe the creativity used to come up with the idea for the feature is the only creativity in the process. Maybe the engineering part isn't creative at all. Maybe it's just problem solving.

But when I hear problem solving it makes me think of the need for creativity to "find a creative solution." I seem to remember hearing that phrase a lot.

Well, what do you think? Is engineering creative? Does it stagnate and get stale without some wandering. Does the wandering need to come before the engineering step, in the feature creation step?


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Art needs discipline

20 November 2014 Unknown 0 Comments

We had a great discussion after that first post. Thank you all for your comments. I learned a lot about creativity and it helped me solidify things that were nebulous.

Today I want to introduce my understanding of how art plays into creativity and explain why I think it needs discipline to thrive long-term.

Art is lots of fun. No matter what your favorite form of art is, most people describe it as the way that they express themselves. People often say that it's how they relax or that they can only feel like themselves when they are creating something in their chosen form of art.

When I think of art, usually the first thing that comes to mind is painting. I picture a disheveled individual in her attic covered in several colors of paint all over her face and clothes. She's staring at a large canvas in front of her that is itself a smattering of colors. To anyone else, her masterpiece is incomprehensible, but to her it has layers of meaning.

That's a broad generalization, I know. There's so many other forms of art, and not all artists are disheveled attic dwellers. I myself prefer creative writing. In my free time I write scifi/fantasy novels. I feel like I have these stories that are just screaming to be told. But some of these stories are pretty out there or very abstract.

As a side note, I will have some exciting news soon about my creative writing.

Going back to the discussion on art, painting and creative writing are very explorational. The process of creation is not very linear. It wanders back and forth and all around before it reaches a destination. Most artists think each work is never finished. There's always more polishing that could be done. There is no final destination.

Art by itself is a wandering exercise, an exploration. And that's why it needs discipline. Art's desire is to wander forever, searching, perfecting. It never ends and not only that, but where it goes is not always very useful to anyone but the artist (think Picasso). It also is not a very constant activity. By that I mean art happens like waves in the ocean. It flows and ebbs from my experience. It's not something that you can force. It takes time.

But if you add a touch of discipline and direction, you'll end up with masterpieces like just about anything Mozart created, or Brandon Sanderson, or Leonardo, or Pablo Neruda. There are countless other examples of people who were amazing artists whose dogged discipline and hard work led to art that will be remembered for generations.

Art needs discipline to thrive.

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Creativity is bipolar

12 November 2014 Unknown 0 Comments

What does it mean to be creative?

That's the question we're exploring here. When I say creativity I mean sustained creativity. Meaning, a pattern of long-term creativity. I'm not exploring how to have one-off brilliant ideas (which do happen and are creative). We might get into that, but what I'm really interested in is how do you consistently be creative and innovative throughout your life or throughout the life of your company.

From my un-scientific research thus far, I have one guiding idea:

Creativity has two parts and when used in separation they will eventually run out of juice. I call those two parts art and engineering.

Art is what we typically think of as creativity, but as a software engineer I've found that it requires some technical creativity.

Why will art and engineering run out of juice over the long haul and lose creativity when not balanced together?

Well, that's kind of what I want to find out. I've got some ideas that I'll be sharing here, but hopefully this is a journey of discovery that I'll be able to take with you.

If you want to come along with me, let me know in the comments where you're starting from. What do you think and know about creativity that could help us?

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