spencercritchley.com Archives: Creativity
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28 May 2009
Tiny Art Director
via tinyartdirector.blogspot.com A completely delightful blog: the Tiny Art Director is the artist’s somewhat demanding and temperamental young daughter. And yes, she is indistinguishable from many adult art directors. Posted via web from Spencer’s posterous
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25 May 2009
A List Apart: Articles: In Defense of Eye Candy
via alistapart.com A great post on why attractive design is more useful, by UI consultant Stephen P. Anderson. Emotions are not just the waste heat of cognition, they’re essential to cognition. So attractive products are not just “more fun” to use, they actually work better. Posted via web from Spencer’s posterous
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13 June 2006
iPod iChing
“Silent Steps”, Nuspirit Helsinki “Boy Meets Goy”, Benny Goodman (featuring Charlie Christian) “Happy”, The Rolling Stones Hear the iMix.
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13 March 2006
Strip Away The Production, Reveal The Great Song Within
I’ve been listening to Moments From This Theater: Live, a wonderful album by the great Memphis/Muscle Shoals songwriters Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. It’s just the two of them, accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and electric piano, recorded at 1998 shows in Ireland and England. They play classics including “Dark End Of The Street”, “Do [...]
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20 June 2005
What Songs Mean
“How much of this was I thinking about when I wrote the song? None of it…. How much of it was I feeling when I wrote the song? All of it.” Bruce Springsteen after a long explanation of the meaning of his song “Devils And Dust”, on VH1 Storytellers
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12 May 2005
Focus: Simple But Hard
Complicated is easy. Simple is hard. But simple is much more valuable. We generate complication when we don’t know, or can’t face, what we’re really talking about. For example, look at the (gigantic) weight loss industry. Here is about all there is to say about how to lose weight: 1. Eat a balanced diet 2. [...]
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11 May 2005
Routine Inspiration
Creativity is attentional, not intentional. It’s hard or impossible to intend to produce creative work and then have that just happen, because creative thought doesn’t seem to take place in the part of the mind that makes plans. Instead, it works much better to lull the intentional part of the mind to sleep, and begin [...]
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4 April 2005
Inspiration, Creativity & Borrowing
NPR is doing a really interesting series called Intersections (you can listen online here): “The public often thinks of artistic inspiration arriving in a sort of thunderbolt moment of creativity. The truth is, almost nothing is created out of thin air. ‘Great works of art set a standard, set the bar,’ says Clint Brown, author [...]
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30 March 2005
I Want Less And I’m Willing To Pay For It
Recently I wrote an article on Flow and musical instrument design, arguing that too many electronic musical instruments disrupt creative flow because their interfaces are poor and they emphasize features instead of user experience. It came out of work done by a brainstorming group at Project Bar-B-Q in the fall of 2004. I used “flow” [...]
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25 March 2005
Bungee Jumping With Technology
“When we try a new technology, the technology changes us. This pattern apparently goes back to the invention of agriculture, which led us to start living in cities (to store & trade crops), to invent writing (for tracking transactions) and… become accountants. Using technology always carries the risk that the technology will make you more [...]