Choose Wisely

At twelve blog posts and ten chapters later, we finish Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. Only a few short pages, Austin leaves us with some last advice which is: creativity is subtraction, put the right constraints on yourself, and (obviously) have fun.

Constraints can help a person become more creative because it provides enough guidelines where the persons brain can start thinking in the right direction. If there are no rules I usually find myself stumped at what I should create because it offers so many possibilities. In those situations where the client or project is giving me so much creative leeway, I try to come up with a few rules for myself.

We had to self-assign a project with our own constraints to challenge ourselves. I decided to try and come up with a logo for five different words which had to relate to the word in some way. It was a great exercise and a good change of pace to work on something that was just for fun. Taking the advice from above, I tried to create these using as little as I could, or finding the slightest change that makes a big difference.

Only one more blog post.

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading.

— B