My Favorite Creativity Blogs

June 22, 2009 by 4 Comments

People always ask what creativity blogs I read on a regular basis. So I’ve put together a brief list to answer that question.

Creative Perch
Dee Wilcox is the author of this blog that has the simple goal to inspire creativity and encourage innovation. I love Dee’s ability to balance practical creativity tips with real life examples of public art, especially guerrilla art.

The Fertile Unknown
This blog written by creativity consultant extraordinaire Michelle James explores the process of creative emergence and what that looks like in life and work, especially business.

Applied Imagination
This is the blog I go to when I want to know what’s new in creativity. Steve Dahlberg does a wonderful job of sorting through the latest news on creativity and posting some of the most interesting ideas out there.

Creativity at Work
Looking at the intersection, or interplay, as author Linda Naiman refers to it, between art, science and business is the focus of this informative blog.

Life Unfolds
Jennifer Lee is a self-described Certified Coach, Writer, Leader, Artist, Yogini and Musepreneur. Her colorful and always creative blog chronicles her personal journey of creative expression.

  • Check out my bookshop for more of my favorite creative reads.
Filed Under: Books, Creativity, Innovation, Inspiration

Who’s Your City?

November 10, 2008 by Leave a Comment

That’s the question that Richard Florida asks in his latest book entitled, Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.

It’s a question I’ve asked myself. Early in my career, I chose to move to our nation’s capital because I was looking for work in museums and with the plethora of cultural institutions dotting the Washington, DC area, I figured I was bound to find a job. And, I did.

Ultimately, I realized that my family was more important. After attaining my career goal in DC, I decided to move back to Ohio to be closer to my loved ones. Although Cleveland has some amazing arts organizations, I decided to take a different path, one in the corporate world.

Filed Under: Books, Creative Economy

Start Your Novel Today!

November 1, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Have you always wanted to write a novel? Got a great story to tell? November is National Novel Writing Month and the perfect time to start writing your masterpiece.

Also known as NaNoWriMo, this initiative focuses on quantity over quality. The goal is to write a 175 page / 50,000 word novel in one month. It may sound like a lot, but if you write just 6 pages a day you can do it. Too often we either don’t start a creative project, because it seems too large, or because we continually edit our work and never end up finishing it. This is an opportunity to simply create without censoring our output.

  • Sign up to write your novel during NaNoWriMo.
Filed Under: Books, Writing

My Creativity Bookshop

October 27, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Last week I added a new addition to my sidebar links – A bookshop. My creativity bookshop has all the books I’ve mentioned in previous posts plus a few more of my favorites to inspire you.

It’s divided into three categories:

  1. General Creativity
  2. Business Creativity
  3. Art / Design
Filed Under: Books

Overcoming Creative Blocks

October 12, 2008 by 4 Comments

I admit, like most people, I get creatively blocked. This latest bout though has been going on awhile now. Yes, I have creative ideas but have been finding it difficult to actually sit down and turn them into reality.

So what causes creative blocks and what can we do to get past them? According to Steven Pressfield in the War of Art, it’s called resistance or that feeling you get when you can’t sit down to create. The feeling that makes you want to do everything from get a cup of coffee, talk on the phone or search the web, rather than create. Basically, it’s anything you do to avoid actually being productive.

Pressfield’s solution to overcoming resistance is to simply sit down and do the work that needs to get done. Like Twyla Tharp, in her book the Creative Habit, Pressfield believes that eventually the work will flow once we are engaged, and like Tharp he believes that creating must be a habit, something that is done every day.

Recently, I’ve been giving into my resistance and not creating at all, because I haven’t had the time to sit down everyday and create.

  • What do you do when life gets in the way of your creating?
Filed Under: Books, Creativity Techniques

Living the Creative Life

August 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I just finished reading Living the Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists by Rice Freeman-Zachery, and I recommend it to anyone wanting to get a peek inside the mind of today’s working artists.

The book features 15 artists and tries to answer the question, “what is creativity?” by covering useful topics like keeping a journal or sketchbook; work spaces and work habits; and the all important, living the artful life.

Comprised of responses by a diverse group of artists, I was pleasantly surprised to see mixed media artists:

  1. Linda Woods
  2. Claudine Hellmuth

And local Cleveland artists featured:

  1. Rebekah Hodous
  2. Scott Radke

Finally, try this exercise, I’ve adapted from the book.

  • Make a list of the 10 most creative people you are inspired by and then write down some of their creations to get a better idea of what inspires you. For example, is it people who make grand works or those who integrate creativity into their daily lives?
Filed Under: Artists, Books, Inspiration

Design Principles for Self Improvement (Part II)

April 10, 2008 by 5 Comments

While I was thinking about this post last night, I was also watching one of my favorite shows, The Big Idea on CNBC. One of the guests was Ty Pennington that hyper yet creative carpenter on those home improvement shows. He talked about how the principles of home design can be used to create our dream life. For instance, he talked about choosing colors and objects for our homes that reflect our personality.

Karim Rashid, a designer and author has a similar philosophy in his book design your self: rethinking the way you live, work, and play. Rashid is best known for his innovative home product, furniture and interior design. Early on, he writes that humans are here to create and that living in such a mass produced world entitles us all to use design, not only to create our environments but also our lives.

Covering topics ranging from life, love, work, and play, this colorful book also includes a section at the end with a yearly guide to getting the most from your life. Despite loving this book and it’s advocacy for leading a creative and individualized life, I found it odd that it was also filled with prescriptive lists and Rashid’s own strict guidelines of how that life should be lived. Still, it’s a must read book to learn how this contemporary creative genius lives and works.

  • How are you using design principles in your daily life?
Filed Under: Books, Design, Inspiration

Design Principles for Self Improvement (Part I)

March 28, 2008 by 1 Comment

Is it me, or have other people noticed the trend of applying design principles to personal growth? As a visual person I am intrigued by the possibilities of exposing these ideas to more people.

Why? Because we live in a society that is increasingly visually based and are inundated by millions of images on a daily basis. Why not understand these principles and use them to our benefit?

The first time I encountered this idea of design as a means of self-improvement was in Lucia Capacchione’s book, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams. Capacchione’s background is in design and art therapy and she blends her experience in both to inspire readers to create vision colleges to help them attain their dream life.

Her 10 design steps for visioning are:
1. Make a wish
2. Search for images and words
3. Focus on the vision
4. Compose the design
5. Explore and find order in creative chaos
6. Create the collage
7. Articulate the vision
8. Reinforce the dream
9. Embrace the reality
10. Celebrate the dream come true

  • Now, create your own collage.
Filed Under: Books, Collage, Inspiration

Group Genius

December 4, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Do you believe becoming a creative genius is an isolated and individual process? Most people would agree with you but not Keith Sawyer.

In Group Genius: the Creative Power of Collaboration he dispels this myth by using improv and jazz as successful examples of group creativity. In both processes, a small spark is created when group members interact with one another by building on previous sparks.

Sawyer goes into more depth about these sparks, even explaining that they occur in all stages of the collaborative creative process:

  1. Preparation
  2. Time off
  3. The spark
  4. Selection
  5. Elaboration

What makes this different from most theories of group creativity is that you don’t have to participate in a traditional brainstorming session to get results. In fact, the most fascinating part of the book is when Sawyer debunks the myths of Morse, Edison and Darwin as individual geniuses. Instead, he explains how they developed their ideas during years of exploration, outside influences, and previous inventions.

This theory appeals to what I’ve always believed about creativity and that is that you can’t create in a bubble. You need to embrace random experiences and diverse opinions and blend them with your personal style.

  • Who has shaped your creative spark?
Filed Under: Books, Business Creativity, Creativity, Innovation

Jack’s Notebook

October 2, 2007 by 2 Comments

A friend, who attended a workshop led by Gregg Fraley, lent me a copy of Jack’s Notebook. I admit I was a little skeptical about the concept: a business novel about creative problem solving (CPS). After reading countless books on creativity, most of them boring or redundant, I was ready for something new.

Jack’s Notebook was just the book I’d been looking for. A cross between Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Da Vinci Code, it tells the story of Jack, an aimless young man, who meets Manny, a mentor, who teaches him creative problem solving (CPS) which he uses to change the direction of his life.

Fraley outlines the steps of CPS in the introduction:

  1.  Identify the challenge
  2.  Facts and feelings exploration
  3. Problem framing and reframing
  4. Idea generation
  5. Solution development
  6. Action planning

Then, he goes on to incorporate them into Jack’s decision making, which ultimately leads to him starting his own business – among other thrilling adventures.

  • What can you achieve using creative problem solving (CPS)?
Filed Under: Books, Business Creativity, Imagination, Problem Solving
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