Creativity/Thinking

Beautiful can most of the time be explained by numbers, for example the classical artists tool, 'the golden mean' or 'rule of thirds' as well as the Fibonacci sequence of number in nature.

Proportion is a stimulus for beauty, the act of knowing when enough is enough, is the artists most important tool.

Beautiful colours are calm pastel shades and the eye is seen as truly beautiful as it allows a glimpse into a person mind.

Sublime is how we try to rationalise events that we simply cannot explain. Before science, many religious events were described using real world adjectives to create the feeling of the sublime.

Both the beautiful and the sublime must to take effect, stimulate the soul and senses before rational thinking can be engaged.

Both images and words can cause the effects of beauty as it is often the connotations of an object, the possibilities that have the greater effect.

In conclusion Burke states that the sublime stimulates the mind while the beautiful stimulates the soul.

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An example of beauty with a purpose is Harry Beck's London Underground map.

'Form followed function' it was a simple aesthetic design with a purpose.

Actual scale proportion in a sense was ignored in favour of easy understanding. I was a fusion of 'cubism' and science, it was modularised information design.

Interestingly aesthetic beauty was not the key aim subconscious although in the end is it classed as art.

The London underground map goes to show that sometimes subconscious acts can some times have greater effect than conscious ones. I really asks the question where does true design come from and backs up Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.

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Bruce Mau states Computer accuracy now subconsciously makes us seek specific ideals and results.

Thanks to 'ctrl z' accidents now really happen and this in turn stops the occurrence of 'creative accidents' or 'happy mistakes.' We should embrace the interruptions and the triumphs, to create more interesting work.

Free flowing movement is a lot harder to replicate on screen than it is in the real world. This makes 'gradual variation' in some cases twice has harder to master.

Style and content are key to great design, it is form and function again.

Sanford Kwinker states that design is shaped by 'meaning.' He says that it is at only the concentrated end of 'meaning' that our passions are ignited and this is known then as 'style.'

Style is charisma, it is the way something is implemented, it is new thinking. For example Pele's bicycle kick. Designers must develop this style and this is a core reason why computers cannot create something beautiful. Design is using past influences to come with something new, but all a computer may have is a 'cookies,' it can't think outside of the box, make links and reinterpret information without human interaction.

Digital or physical design must communicate meaning by the rules of human interaction or 'performativity.'

Mau states that graphics can only take you to the brink of beautiful, images are the key source of terror and the sublime.

Mau states that 'Laughter makes risk tolerable' so stay happy!!!

Mau also says that all areas of today's inventory's design is influenced by the 'Global Image Economy' or the GIE.

This GIE has crammed the world we live in and over stimulates all of us. He uses to describe all classes of design and states that this is the barrier that you design must wrestle with and stand out from.

The 'inventory' makes up the GIE and in turn creates a foreground and background of the world we live in.

Since the internet isn't monitored by a single policing body could a dictatorship be created and delivered to the masses.

Mau states that as the places we travel become more and more like each other. We are starting to only find cultural attraction in the taboo local activities.

It is also important to note that aesthetic pleasing isn't always the best solution for a piece of work. 'Television verite' of reality TV can have all the drama of a feature film but doesn't need to by as polished and finished.

Mau states that music creates notions of love (beauty) and images create notions of the terror (sublime).

Unlike original predictions physical arts 'aura' as actually strengthened thanks to the digital telecommunication age. This is due to the ease of reproducing and coverage of unique material.

Mau created 'An incomplete manifesto for growth.' Basically it an open ended bullet narrative that gives general guidelines to being creative. A core point is that to create something great, you must not strive to because it will never come. You must throw down your inhibitions and go for it, using the GIE for influence, but dissecting it to come up with something new.

In publishing it is better to perform what you are teaching rather than just illustrate it.

Design must partner context and content. You must show a journey of understanding through you design, take the audience on the journey you have walked.

Before post script systems, code type was used. Code systems such as 'Archie' became much cheaper when 'visual display' systems came on to the market, but needed a much higher skilled worker to use them.

Mau really believes that authors of the content must be involved in the design.

'The society of the spectacle states' states seductive advertising is evil. It is the taboo of sexual advertised products that attracts us to them.

Mau states that you studio or working place should be seen as a 'transformation loop' Information goes in, is sorted and meshed together, then a product is output.

Mau states that the audiences 'history of access' or past experiences allow them to navigate at most 4 difference styles of information layout, without becoming confused.

'Image weave' - the Libertine reader

"Constant total length approach' - one change effects a another. It is closely linked to John Whitneys, 'harmonic progression.'

Design must use the audience's 'cone of vision.' It must work under the radar for the greatest effect. Rationalisation and other thinking should not occur, it simply should be seen as the only way something could have been implemented.

Macintosh originally started as a tool for distorting fonts, 'Fontgrapher.'

Mau states that it is important when designing to produce every step of the evolvement and look at it from all the angles. This is because the creative mind is full of contradictions. You must be individual but willing to take input, you must invent but also know when to comprise.

A key example of 'taste' throughout time is the USA's 'Betty Crocker,' The meaning of the image throughout time has stayed the same, but had various incarnations to keep it up to date with the fashionable ideals of how the desired meaning is being shown within society.

Thanks to today's over production of 'signals,' Influential design today takes things to the extreme, this could be 'Apple's' total minimal approach to graphic and product design. Here scale is used to force the audience to strive to recognise the complexity in how the ideas was conceived.

Mau's '100 logos, 1000 colours' project for the NAi shows this extreme. Here the logo was created then twisted and manipulated on every piece of literature. This forced the viewer to savour every interaction with the brand, like the first.

Thanks to digital technologies, 'imaging' is now more common that 'graphics.' We are starting to see this in logos, such as Universal. It seems graphic designers today are more selectors of graphics rather than creators.

This then begs the question that due to ease of access to graphic applications, logos will start looking like each other, due to fact that images can have more connotations than graphics, i.e. more scope.

One way of getting unique logos is to use unique fonts. One way BMD do this to use a process called 'font breeding,' here two parent fonts are morphed together to create various versions in between. Here the speed and quick variation aspect of digital design becomes a great plus. A version is then picked an implemented into the design, as it was with the Walt Disney concert all brand in LA.

Thanks to such web-sites as 'Amazon.com' that distribute products internationally at relatively low cost, you design must now compete on an international scale. One successful way to do this is of course to create a brand or 'voice.'

The GIE is crammed with 'voices' from various entities all striving for your attention and time.

Mau states that companies such as Nike, McDonalds and Coca-Cola, have 'brand equity' and in fact are very transparent to the public.

Mau states they are two types of creative people, those who 'round up' and those who 'round down.' Designers must be 'time thieves' and use time efficiently.

For creative methodology look at the 'Twelve Strategies.' These a technically not strategies but 'tools.' One may be used of more to solve a problem. This allows the creative process to be free and not bound to the same old 'track,' allowing nervous consciousness to be used.

Thanks to digital development 'perfection' is truly attainable target. This then stops the process of accidents being developed and in some cases can narrow the width of the idea. This has happened most notably in photography where post capture reviewing hasn't allowed accidents to be developed and built upon in post production. It seems accidental abstract has been replaced by photo realistic reproduction and modification. This means that thanks to Photoshop the image can now lie and deceive the audience more than it ever could before.

For speed and circulation the computer is to the image what the typewriter was to text. It begs the question, that due to the ease and speed of image manipulation could images become a serious internationally language.

In corporate design more often than not the designer is confined to a little time at the end of the development stage. Mau believes that 'realisation' and 'design' should partner each other throughout the development stage, very much a student works at university.

A published book is a 'frozen moment in time,' a rare occurrence in today's real time digital world. A problem with designing across mediums is that in each design we see the limitations of each one.

In design 'amplifiers' must be used to exaggerate key areas from the background noise. This can be done by scale, colour, and shape.

'Bandwidth' today plays a key role in design. A web-site more often than not has more depth and bandwidth than a note of paper. But a well produced book has more bandwidth than a web-site due to its physical 'subliminal messages.' The way digital is attaining this physical attribute is by making the digital content more interactive, for example virtual reality and art installations. It is all about engaging the senses, the more senses you stimulate the more of the viewers attention you have, and maybe even their emotions.

Great design should cause the 'third event,' let the reader compare and contrast, then conclude.

Good design integrates and organises information. Brands such as Coca-Cola relies on the repetition of its image to over saturate the GIE and in turn be the first thing people think of when they want a soda drink.

Marketing and television are the 20th Century's 'cloaking. devices. Television is marketing at light-speed. Memorable events are named after 5 years, historic after 10 years. TV as speeded up how we relate to the world, the internet can only make this quicker, information at 'hyper-speed' maybe?

'Tree City' in Toronto is an example of beauty being grown into a city, it isn't preserving the environment, but creating and developing it. It mirrors the development of the London Underground map, as it is very 'diagrammatic.'

Typography is seen as a 'black art,' it contains cognitive to associative meanings. Unlike cognitive, associative meaning evolves with time and fashion. Designers uses these associative meanings to open up channels between the design and viewer, increasing the bandwidth. This only grows with repetition of image and meaning.

Typography's job is to deliver content by changing our attention. Typography in a sense is closely linked to architecture as it can only develop as much as convention and legibility let.

Design is about shaping time and attention, typography and images are used to create an 'ethos.' It concerns the 'Gestalt' or the overall environmental effect. It is the ability we have to instantly recognise logos etc.

Like TV, typography can control the speed in which information travels. Both reader and viewer must be taken in consideration and 'tracks' laid down to make sure the design appeals to both. Type must be used by understanding how it normally laid out, one example of this is the 'orthogonal gird.' Here typography is closely linked to mass production trends.

The grid pattern can be disregarded as avant-garde, 'Free-Form Typographic Poets' did. The text performed its content rather than just displayed it. Here there is two ways of displaying information, the first offers it on a plate and because of this, is the quickest. The second makes the viewer put together the information in their own head, causing the act of thinking.

It is ok to strive for 'perfection' but once it is achieved and reproduced it loses its uniqueness and in turn its character.

One attack on the extra bandwidth interaction has in relation to the book, was the 'Book Machine.' Here a 'feedback loop' was created so that the book could grow, develop, decay, die and be reborn.

In relation to controlled bandwidth to information it is maybe interesting to look at some communist states rules on marketing and advertising.

'Boredom' is the brains attempt at keeping the status quo. Another model to Burkes 'taste' theory is Ira Greenburgs, 'common visual algorithmic literacy.' This usually occurs when the right and left part of the brain integrate.

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As the bandwidth of information we are exposed to becomes grater our physical interactions will become less and less. For example before tv, the fireplace was where the family socialise. This then changed to the tv and social interactions decreased, you could argue that now with the internet and ability to view information anywhere in the house that the family relationship has hit rock bottom?

Information is de-centralised, even images and text move through cyberspace at light speed without being bound to paper.

More information though doesn't automatically result in a greater understanding though, as garbage data is still garbage what ever medium it is in.

Unlike before then, peripheral vision will be a factor and this will be an indicator on how the audience perceive the information as it is very important to naturally understanding you surroundings.

This 'opening' up of the screen will allow 'smart places' to engage our senses at multiple levels. It will be like going from a 56kb modem to a 10GB one.

This kind of virtual reality is a modern interpretation of he Renaissance's obsession with architectural space and perspective.

Due to the notion that to be comfortable in our surroundings and not be totally submersed in VR, a much realistic idea is 'Hybrid architecture.' Here graphical overlaying of our actual architecture will be used to allow you peripheral vision to stay comfortable in its environment will also engaging all of you senses.

This overlaying of information may give birth to a day when we can stop cluttering up our urban areas with all the GIE and target viewers key desires.

Architecture of the future will no longer play with masses in light but digital in space.

If we say that it is when we physically interact with information that the 'bandwidth' of that medium is seen has high, should we in relation to online meeting places make them more like physical ones such as cafes etc. Should they adhere to material objects rules, gravity or weather?
Will they be private, public or commercially controlled?

It is important to note that chat rooms, due to anonymous 'handles' are more like Mardi Gras, and really should be seen as an addition to the physical meeting place not a replacement.

Thanks to such technologies as SMS and Email, we can now prearrange meetings with people. This means that we get a kind of 'tunnel vision' that blinkers us to the other possibilities of meeting other people will might benefit from meeting. This is in a way catered for by subject specific chat rooms where all the inhabitants have a shared interest. These are known as 'Civitas' or families with shared common beliefs and interests.

With commission free web-sites, it is now the extra bandwidth of information they offer that come into play, the quality.

In a twist of bandwidth, Ken Goldma ad Joseph Santarommano's 'Telegarden' allows uses to input basic interactions via keyboard and mouse to control real actions of robots at the other side of the world. This allows the user to simply interact with a artificial being to plant seeds and create natural life that you would be able to to touch. smell, see and taste.

When choosing how to interact 'the economy of presence' or EOP, comes into play. This is the availability of being able to compare and weigh up various styles of medium when communicating with various people. You can decide the size of the bandwidth needed for the interaction, do you need to just talk to them, or see them as well.

More often than not the more senses you stimulate the higher bandwidth and the more intense the interaction. 'Synchronous' communication does this by engaging both sight, smell, touch and sound in real time. 'Asynchronous' communication only usually stimulates one sense such as sight or sound, it is sometimes cheaper and less time consuming though. More often than not if it is important we will meet up with someone locally face-to-face and if it isn't we will simply send them remotely an email.

EOP is the pushing the service of the worlds companies further and further as Amazon.com give you information on what you might like to read and Waterstones contain coffee shops so that you can use it like a library and see and feel the books.

It is important to finally note that the power of the physical place will always prevail when particular cultural, scenic and climatic attractions are thrived for. Simply, we will sometimes use networks to avoid places, and sometimes we will go places to network!

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Adam Fletcher is more interested in the thoughts behind visual stimuli rather than the mechanics. He asks 'Are we pawns of destiny or wildly improbable flukes?' The earth seems too small to hold so much, it is just a 'Twinkle in Gods eye.'

Could the our common 'tastes' come the from the fat that we all originated from the same place? For example everyone in Europe is supposed to relatives of the one of seven families. Can our genetics have an influence on what we like and don't like.

Fletcher states the computer is fast becoming and extension of the brain.

'Civilisation' is only chaos taking a rest.'

Stephen Jay Gould states that '...human thought and emotion have a universality that transcends time and converts the different stages of history into theatres that provide lessons for modern players.' This emphasised in meaning with the introduction of recording history through images. Interestingly areas that have imagery of bad past events don't do them anymore, while areas that don't allow image history recording to take place still do horrible things to their inhabitants.

An 'Acheulian Hand Axe' from 1.5 million years ago is the first solid example of a shared 'taste,' or style to producing something that works well and efficiently.

Milton Glaser states that 'Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.'

Glaser also states that beauty is when, 'The imaginative and the functional fuse and finally become indistinguishable.' Or Mau states its when two objects collide and make a third.

Louise Bourgeois was the first person the sew fig leafs over nude figures on tapestries for rich American clients. It is a taste or trend that still continues to this date.

Fletcher asks could we be dreaming all the time, but during the day there is to much conscious static going on that we don't realise. For example Hundertwasser states that when a dream is dreamt alone it is just a dream, but when we dream together it is a new reality.

There are 3 types of ideas; 'Lethal,' which are ideas that simply could not have been interpreted any other way. 'Promiscuous,' are ideas that are recycled when at first they were disapproved. 'Fertile,' are ideas that are like chaos theory, they grow and spread seeds, getting larger and more meaningful as time goes on.

For taste and collective understanding, look at 'Brainwiring.' This is a the ability to come up with the same solution for the same problem. Another example of this is 'Visual Chinese Whispers.'

On the Minority Report extras it states, that we do not see in rectangles, we don;t see the world through a PC screen. We see the world using or focused vision and peripheral vision. Also when dreaming or seeing in memories in our heads, we don't see a recording from one specific place. Instead your brain sparks and creates the image using layers from various parts of the brain that are linked together by microscopic electrical nerves, called neural connections.

Mitchell states that thanks to computers 'creativity' can be sped up as trial and errors can be produced and disregarded quicker.

Fletcher states that the brain registers beauty and love in the modern and outer layer. The intermediate layer deals with everyday things and the ancient layer deals with fear and lust. This is a called a 'Triune' brain and may explain why 'fear' is a much more effective emotion than love and the core of 'sublime.' It is maybe where 'love' originally came from, from the fear for a 'loved ones' well being.

The visual part of the brain is 30% of the cortex and it has various cells to deal with scale, shape and colour. Also it is important to note that the left side of the brain is the 'doer' side and the right side is the 'dreamer' side. But our sense are cross linked, so left eye goes o right cortex etc.

Karl Popper states the brain has three tiers, one for see and touch, one for conscious and unconscious states and one for thoughts and ideas. It is important to remember that a computer cycles through data in a linear fashion while the mind jumps from connection to connection. Also that the more a computer knows the slower it gets, while the more the mind knows the quicker it get.

Key factors in our brains understanding data and emotions are, 'brain integration' where the two sides of the brain interact offering up different thoughts. The other is the notion that since 'sight' is our most used sense, we strive to simplify things so that we can take more visual information in at time. This is said to have originally started us thinking abstractly.

'Synaesthetes' are people who have cross sensed sensations, for example hearing a sunset and seeing music.

Fletcher states that there are two types of learning; 'Rock logic' that simply adds information upon information to acquire more knowledge. 'Water logic' where water cannot be added to water as it mixes together, thus making the idea grow and develop. Th first results in units that add up to a conclusion and the second results in images that conjure up a perception.

Fletcher states that 'Imaging is visualising as language is to thinking.'

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Interaction can be narrowed down to one of the core types, learning.
VAK (Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic) Learning based on Howard Gardner's 'Theory of Multiple Intelligencies' and other psychologist models, is a modern movement in schools give a same quality of education to different learners. It is an area where technology will play a key part, both in interaction and access. It is important to note that every subject in schools in the UK must use computers at some point on the curriculum.

Here is Gardners model of the seven multiple intelligences at a glance:
- Linguistical - words and language
- Logical-mathmatical - logic and numbers
- Musical - music, sound and rhythm
- Bodily-kinaesthetic - body movement control
- Spatial-visual - images and space
- Interpersonal - other peoples feelings
- Intrapersonal - self-awareness

Possible additions to this list is:
- Naturalist - natural environment
- Spiritual/Existential - religion and 'ultimate issues'
- Moral - ethics, humanity and value of life

The additional intelligences haven't been added though due to their subjective. In all Gardner states that an individual learner may have one or many of the intelligences. This usually depends on the 'Bradin Dominance Model.' He says that it is more beneficial to test for learning styles rather and IQ.

Spatial and visual VAK learning is the creation of images, pictorial imagination expression, understanding of the relationships between images and meanings, and between space and time, to communicate information.

Typical users of this intelligence learning style are artists, designers, architects, ton-planners, inventors, engineers, beauty consultants etc. The jobs where this can be useful is when painting a pictures, designing a dress, creating a co-orporate logo of simply packing the boot of a car, Tetris style!!! These kind of people like to learn using pictures, shapes, images and 3D space.

Interpersonal can also influence teachers and artists. It effects anyone who likes to further themselves skill wise. This relates to any person who can look at themselves, understand what the like, dislike or what they are missing and react to this in a specifically, meaningful way. People who do this are related to the 'Emotional Intelligence Model.'