When I was doing my degree in Visual Communication at university, in first year, we did a subject called “Creative Problem Solving”. Being the young, green, immature designer that I was, I thought it was such a useless subject. I don’t know that I got a great deal out of it. Maybe the course content wasn’t great, or maybe I just wasn’t ready for it.
I now recognise that creative problem solving is one of the things I love doing most. Whether it is a designing an embroidery, designing a poster, laying out a page, designing our new kitchen (quite some years ago now!), designing my office space or something else that needs solving, it’s this problem solving that I really, really enjoy. I love the mental challenge it brings. I love pushing a design further and further to see how I can keep introducing new ideas to make it better or different.
When I was at uni, I don’t think I was very good at pushing my designs. I recognise in my children that they are getting better at it in their artmaking (both of them love art at school). I am glad that I learnt to push myself to not settle for the first idea. The first idea is rarely the best. Usually all it is is a springboard to work from. It might contain the germ of an idea, but rarely is it THE idea.
planning and designing my new office space
I recently redesigned my office space. It had become a total (and I mean total!) mess, and was no longer useable because *I* couldn’t fit in there! So with the help of my husband I cleared it out, and started again. I thought about all the things I needed to store. I thought about all the things I would do in the space and planned storage for the relevant stuff nearby. We invested in new storage cupboards, bookshelves, a large desk and a huge work table with storage underneath. I love working in there now. It’s a lovely, restful, useful, creative space. The process of designing the space was so much fun. It was just one big problem to be solved.
When I’m designing an embroidery, I design on computer. I’ll start with my initial ideas and get them down. Then I’ll save a copy of the file and start moving things. I’ll change things. Then when I’m happyish with it (or really not happy with it!) I’ll save a new copy and move onto the next iteration. I’ll think, “What if I tried this?”, and I’ll try it.
It’s not unusual for me to have many, many iterations before I’ll come up with one that I’m really happy with. I might go back to previous versions and see if there is something in one of those files that I can take and add to the current one. Or I might just enjoy looking at the earlier ones to see how far the eventual one progressed from them, and improved so much.
My computer is littered with half-finished designs. But I don’t see this as a waste of space or as a waste of my time. Rather it is an integral part of my design process. Sometimes, I’ll go back many years later and see if I can use or adapt one of those very old designs for something new. They’re quite a treasure trove of ideas, after all.
This process would be much harder, I think, if I was designing on paper. But you can trace, and photocopy, and cut up, and flip, and turn.
How do you develop your ideas?
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
Thank you for sharing your creative process, Yvette! I usually come up with an idea, have it in the back of my head for a while, take a long walk and usually wake up in the middle of the night with the perfect design. Since I have no trouble at all going back to sleep, it isn’t a big deal. Then the next morning, I’ll start drawing it and progress to stitching it. And I can pull all the information and steps from my mind in a pretty orderly manner. I love my brain :)!
That sounds wonderful, Jessica. I have a similar “percolate then pop out of the brain” thing that happens at times too. I’ve already partly written another blog post on that.
Thanks for sharing. I’m an electrical engineer and do this daily in my job, but never really thought about how it would apply to my more artistic hobbies. Now I’m curious about how the process would be applied to design embroidery pieces. Usually when I get stalled, I go for a walk. It keeps me occupied, I get a little workout, I see new scenery, and somehow parts of my brain make magic happen in the background. (and, yes, sometimes it takes multiple walks over several days to find the solution).
Jodi, I see many things simply as a problem to be solved. Not an overwhelming difficult problem, but a challenge. I hope that you can figure out how to use your problem solving in new, and creative ways!
And if you read my next post, you’ll see how I use a similar process to your walks to solve the really difficult problems. 🙂 I like your phrase “parts of my brain make magic happen” – I understand the joy of that!