thinkinghow.com

All thinkers, creators and innovators need to be able to share their ideas with others in order to give them value and life.

As the saying goes: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Yes, mostly true. Here are ways of communicating complex ideas that have caught my eye recently.

• Complex concepts explained in a few words. NEW MATH by Craig Damrauer

• Telling one story well (though this may be a case of using statistics to suit a purpose…).

• And finally, explaining REALLY big things such as the US Stimulus package. See the full series of illustrations at Life of HOK

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Here is a really great story of a low tech creative event open to and well supported by the public. Have a look at the video below to get an idea of the age of the people involved and a what a marvelous way for everyone to get a little creative. A new spin on crowd-sourcing?

What I particularly like about this is that its teaching children (and by default the adults too?) that everyone has a creative capacity. It’s also teaching that every idea has a place amongst everyone else’s. So simple.

Now tell me – wouldn’t you like to see Chrysler or GM’s executives out in the carpark their chalk working on their recovery plan. I would!!

Dozens of boxes of thick, pastel sidewalk chalk sticks were being cracked open, the contents, purchased with private donor funds, distributed free to all who came. By day’s end much of the stock of 30,000 sticks had been worn down to tiny chips and nubs.

by Chris Knape | The Grand Rapids Press

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In my last post a suggested some ways to innovate in a down economy. Two suggestions I made was to Observe and to Collect Ideas, but I should’ve  also added Share.

In that spirit I’d invite you to take a look at the following article which presents 10 actions for better (sustainable) design.

Allan Chochinov, editor-in-chief at Core 77, was a speaker at Compostmodern on Saturday, and presented some great steps for designers. He calls them “Denting an Impossible Design Problem in 10 Sustainable Steps.”

While these are intended to apply to sustainable design I think that they are equally applicable to any project requiring creative thinking. Allan’s steps were:

1. Acknowledge the privilege you have as a designer.
2. Use the word “consequence”.
3. Question authority.
4. Surround yourself with the awesomest people you can.
5. Don’t play fair.
6. Be intentionally dumb.
7. Redistribute – then reduce, reuse, and recycle.
8. Broaden your market.
9. Indulge in discursive design.
10. Talk to anyone who will listen.

For an expanded commentary of the ten steps take a look at the TreeHugger article.

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