08 February 2011
Posted by Sozi
Meet Nille Svensson. Nille's design and art seems so effortless that I want to BE him. I donned a beard to see if that is where the secret lay. It turns out that there is more to it.
Nille handed me a sledgehammer and I asked him what to break.
First thing is to try to reverse the thought of designing in order to meet expectations. Too much time is spent by creatives to make things be "like" something. Try to think out of the given categories. If you create a book cover that doesn't look like a book cover, embrace that. From that moment it will be what a book cover may look like.
Oh Sozi, you look confused. What I mean is, don't get too preoccupied with fitting in to design culture, try to add to it instead, enrich it. Be grateful for every idea your mind comes up with and squeeeeeeze it into your work, if that is what it takes.
How did you change the way you worked to make your Fake China?
How is it different to your other projects?
It is different because I choose the medium before working on the concept or the design. I got invited to be part of an exhibition and all I knew was that I wanted to create ceramic plates. After deciding on that I tried to come up with a concept and design that would be suitable.
I think that working in a medium or a field that you haven't worked in before frees up a lot of creative energy, you can't be an expert on something you've never done before so you just lower your expectations to a healthy low level. And working with materials or methods that you haven't tried before is so refreshing and fulfilling in itself so you're bound to get excited about what you are doing, even if the result isn't spectacular. It is just a way to inject curiosity and discovery into your creative process.
But what if you fail? Is that ok?
Samuel Beckett thought it was cool to fail but I don't. I think we have very good intuitive ways of knowing what we have to do in order to succeed. What I mean is that I think that we often know beforehand that we are creating circumstances for ourselves that almost inevitably will lead to failure. If you do something that you are positively convinced will work and it unexpectedly blows up in your face, that's ok. That's not failing, it is just shit happening to you. But if you, against better judgement, compromise with your creative conditions the failure that might ensue just isn't ok.
Meet Nille Svensson. Nille's design and art seems so effortless that I want to BE him. I donned a beard to see if that is where the secret lay. It turns out that there is more to it.
Nille handed me a sledgehammer and I asked him what to break.
First thing is to try to reverse the thought of designing in order to meet expectations. Too much time is spent by creatives to make things be "like" something. Try to think out of the given categories. If you create a book cover that doesn't look like a book cover, embrace that. From that moment it will be what a book cover may look like.
Oh Sozi, you look confused. What I mean is, don't get too preoccupied with fitting in to design culture, try to add to it instead, enrich it. Be grateful for every idea your mind comes up with and squeeeeeeze it into your work, if that is what it takes.
How did you change the way you worked to make your Fake China?
How is it different to your other projects?
It is different because I choose the medium before working on the concept or the design. I got invited to be part of an exhibition and all I knew was that I wanted to create ceramic plates. After deciding on that I tried to come up with a concept and design that would be suitable.
I think that working in a medium or a field that you haven't worked in before frees up a lot of creative energy, you can't be an expert on something you've never done before so you just lower your expectations to a healthy low level. And working with materials or methods that you haven't tried before is so refreshing and fulfilling in itself so you're bound to get excited about what you are doing, even if the result isn't spectacular. It is just a way to inject curiosity and discovery into your creative process.
But what if you fail? Is that ok?
Samuel Beckett thought it was cool to fail but I don't. I think we have very good intuitive ways of knowing what we have to do in order to succeed. What I mean is that I think that we often know beforehand that we are creating circumstances for ourselves that almost inevitably will lead to failure. If you do something that you are positively convinced will work and it unexpectedly blows up in your face, that's ok. That's not failing, it is just shit happening to you. But if you, against better judgement, compromise with your creative conditions the failure that might ensue just isn't ok.
| < Prev | facebooktwitter | Next > |
I love ideas.
The only trouble is,
I can't seem to ever finish them.
I decided it was time to ask
my friends for advice.
I thought it was a good idea.
They told me to stop procrastinating.