Thinking Creatively

by Robin Landa

Describes a variety of techniques for coming up with creative ideas, and suggests more than forty visual thinking exercises

Genres: Design

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Robin Landa holds the title of Distinguished Professor in the Robert Busch School of Design at Kean University of New Jersey. She is included among the teachers that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching calls the “great teachers of our time.” Most recently, Landa was a finalist in the Wall Street Journal’s Creative Leaders competition.
Professor Landa has won many awards for design, writing, teaching, and creative leadership, including: National Society of Arts and Letters, The National League of Pen Women, New Jersey Authors Award, Creativity, Graphic Design USA, Art Directors Club of New Jersey, The Presidential Excellence Award in Scholarship from Kean University, and the Rowan University Award for Contribution to Design Education.
Landa is the author of twelve published books about graphic design, branding, advertising, and creativity including Graphic Design Solutions, 4th edition (Wadsworth), Advertising by Design, 2nd edition (John Wiley & Sons), Designing Brand Experiences (Cengage Learning), and Thinking Creatively (HOW books). Her books have been translated into Chinese and Spanish.
Co-authoring with her colleague Professor Rose Gonnella, she wrote Visual Workout Creativity Workbook (Cengage Learning); and co-authored 2D: Visual Basics for Designers with Gonnella and award-winning designer Steven Brower. Known for her expertise in creativity, Landa penned Thinking Creatively (HOW), and co-authored Creative Jolt and Creative Jolt Inspirations (North Light Books) with Rose Gonnella and Denise M. Anderson. Robin’s article on ethics in design, “No Exit for Designers,” was featured in Print magazine’s European Design Annual/Cold Eye column; other articles have been featured in HOW magazine, Step Inside Design, Critique, and Icograda. Robin’s Amazon Shorts—“Advertising: 11 Insights from Creative Directors” and “Branding: 10 Truths Behind Successful Brands”—both reached the #1 spot on the Shorts best-seller list.
Robin has lectured across the country at the HOW International Design Conferences, Graphic Artists Guild conference, College Art Association, Thinking Creatively conference, Art Directors Club of New Jersey, and the One Club Education Summit. She has been interviewed on radio, television, in print, and the World Wide Web on the subjects of design, creativity, and art.

Reviews

[Cara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good design is not just making things look pretty. It's problem-solving, creativity, and representing the concepts visually.

Process

1. Determine project objectives and strategy
- talk to client
- list objectives
- devise strategy--a plan to execute your design objectives.
- Go for clarity, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, intelligence, insight into the audience.

2. Clarify the objectives and strategy
- what is the function of the design?
- purpose?
- role in greater marketing plan?
- audience?
- where will it be seen and for how long?
- what spirit should be conveyed?
- selling points and ranking of company? (if commodity, what one characteristic can you focus on to distinguish?)

3. Determine design criteria
- based on budget of money and time

4. Research

5. Create a concept

6. Develop the concept
- redefine problem
- brainstorm/ list anything and everything related to subject
- expand ideas
- play
- ruminate
- take notes
- try different directions
- follow intuition

7. Design
- thumbnail sketches
- comps (comprehensives--pretty mock-ups, almost finished)
- rework from feedback on comps
- production

I think the advice in this book is very good. However, a lot of the examples seem gratuitously "designy" to me--excessive pretties that don't seem to serve any purpose in communication, other than to make the viewer go "wow, look at that huge purple letter! That's awesome!"

[Shahir S]

i havnt got to read the book yet.. so