{"id":8918,"date":"2017-06-06T13:49:31","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T03:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=8918"},"modified":"2017-10-24T16:45:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T05:45:46","slug":"creative-problem-solving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2017\/06\/06\/creative-problem-solving\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative problem solving"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"planning

planning and designing my new office space<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

How do you develop your ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,22,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-designing","category-making-stuff","category-white-threads","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8924,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions\/8924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}