There was one portion of Carlos Whittaker’s session that stood out to me: being creative with creative meetings.
Often times, we gather together with our laptops, listen to the event or concept that needs creativity applied to it, then the music people open iTunes and the designers employ google images and we use these mediums to gain inspiration and thusly share “our” ideas. And it’s from there that we apply “creativity” and “give life” to this concept or event.
And these mediums are not altogether bad because inspiration can be drawn from almost anywhere, but when that becomes the norm, made the routine and clichéd into a stereotype, that’s when our creative meetings are exactly the opposite of what we’re there to accomplish. We miss the mark in thinking that since our last creative meeting was so successful and so effective, we have to do it the exact same way and in the exact same place the next time in order to gain the same results. We attempt to stewart a method and build on it because it works, but what we have to realize and accept as creatives is that we constantly need to be changing our environment and our methods in order to spawn innovative and new ideas.
As creatives, there should be madness to our methods. The organic, unpredictable and spontaneous flow of inspiration is creativity at its peak. And sometimes that costs us comfort, settledness and control.
Carlos Whittaker shared some things he does with his creative team, specifically the meetings, which I thought would be worth implementing. They are below:
- No laptops allowed. Pen, paper and original ideas only.
- Never meet in the same place two times in a row.
- Separate bucket meeting and creative meetings (bucket meetings being those that are solely used to throw out as many ideas as possible and the creative meetings being those used to extract the best of those ideas).
You cannot come to meeting unless you’re so full of ideas that you’re ready to vomit.
I believe these guidelines will create an environment that enables the team to learn and experiment with new concepts; empowers the them to consistently be growing and maximizing their creativity; and challenges them to dig deep for original, authentic ideas.