Creative Workspaces

As a designer in a creative industry many people find their workspace is where they collect different materials that inspire them in the designing process, whether it be from books, drawings, flyers, images etc. Artists surround themselves with materials that make it easier to complete the design process. Its from this process that makes each designers workspace an individual environment and unique to each person. Some designers work in messy environments while others have to be in clean and tidy spaces. From the spaces they work in you can get an incite into a designers thought process and understand better their techniques and how their completed works were achieved and developed. Below I have uploaded a few examples of workspaces that I find interesting and can relate to in my own work. 

Unlike some of the spaces above my creative environment changes depending on the project I’m working on at the time. I work best if I’m surrounded by everything I need around me all at an arms length away but also sometimes need to remove myself from that environment and work in a tidy and clutter free workspace. Although I must say I do need background noise to be able to get stuck in, there’s nothing worse than working in a silent room with nothing to listen too! 

Developing Ideational Fluency

Developing ideational fluency can come in useful as an artist as it helps you to expand your mindset from producing one idea into several different ideas. Commonly achieved through brainstorming you can take one main subject and write down everything and anything that comes into your mind when thinking about it. This then develops into mind mapping, where you take the ideas you thought of during the brainstorm and organize them so they work together with each other creating new and initiative ideas that you might of never thought of or thought possible before completing the process.

While brainstorms usually consist of noting down words, mind maps involve more visual examples of working. Images and illustrations help to show the developing thought processes and show in wider detail the creative thought processes occurring around one idea and how the artist has come across them.

Below is an example of the difference between a brainstorm and a mind map. By looking at both ways of extracting ideas and noting them down to be developed both processes work well together as one expands the thought process while the other a more creative process. This results in greater and more creative ideas that are unique to the individual artists. 

Brainstorm.

Mind map.