Creativity is the key in design?

Let's look at the picture, and think what can you create by using a ball and a line.

That was my lecturer asked me to do in class. For you, you may think that creative was needed in this class activity. However, I didn't think that creative was the key for this class activity. Observation, imagination and creativity were needed at the same time. WHY?

This was because, I believed that the starting point of doing everything was observation. Observe could help you to explore and you may get ideas from it. Like this class activity, I needed to observe the picture, and think about what should I draw. When I had no ideas, I could observe things around the class. The pencil box, the chair, the door, all these things could inspire me sometime. Sometimes, when you observe the things that happened around you may inspire you to create a design or create a new product. The people nowadays were too depend on their phone. Most of the people did their research on their phone, but not using their eyes. In real life, I always observe the plants, people, animals and also things which were around me. For this class activity, I had looked around our class few times, and I get some ideas when I look around.

What about imaginative? I knew that creativity and imagination were important as being designer. However, I believe what my lecture told me when I started my design education, "Creativity can be TRAINED". Yah, I knew there were some people who were born with talent and they were creative. And I knew that I was not the one who born with talent. Design needed creative and imagination. For this class activity, if you had good imagination and creativity, you could draw/created many different drawings/things. For me, I had tried my best to imagine what could I draw with a ball and a line.

At first, our lecture asked us to draw ten subjects with a ball and a line. After we did it, she asked us to draw another ten subjects. HAHAHA

Everyone was confusing in thinking what should we draw in the second round. Then, our lecturer said that we can imagine the ball was cut in half or maybe we could draw something in the ball. Yah, that was called IMAGINATION. Imagine the ball in with different angle. Imagine it was cut in half, and use your creativity to create a subject. I think my classmates were creative as many of them had good ideas.

For the third round, our lecturer started to draw her idea out on the whiteboard. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo for that. I still remember that she drew a wizard and a stove. I really like that idea.

Actually, for this class activity, our lecture would like to teach us the context in story-telling was important. Like what we drew with a ball and a line could bring out a different meaning. Maybe you drew a bowl of salad, but I drew sunglasses. There were different meaning when you drew or used different context.

That was really important when I would like to design/created a design with a right/suitable context. If I was using a wrong context, I would bring our a wrong message to my audiences. As a graphic designer, I think one of the important goal to create a design was communicate with my audiences. Let them understand about my design and the ways+the context of story telling was important as well.

From this class activity, I knew that all of us had different thinking when looking at a same subject. All of us may have different ideas as well. I think we could get more and more ideas when we are in a group, because we may inspire each others. That was what we called teamwork! HAHAHA

That's what I think for this class activity. :)

How about you? Do you think context is important in story-telling? OR Do you think creativity is the only key of design?

For me, I think context what important, and also how you present it is important as well. Besides, I don't think creativity is the only key for design. XD