'Open your eyes'

Yesterday I had my second contemporary design class. It was all about inspiring us to open our eyes and look around. This was to show us that creativity and inspiration surrounds us even when we don't see it, which is why the art of looking is very important to us as designers.

We were asked what we think creativity is? Where do we seek it? How do we express our creative spirits? For this discussion, I was paired with my fellow student Mary and an Erasmus student Pien. We all had very interesting takes on creativity. I joked how usually my best ideas come in the shower or just when I'm about to fall asleep. I finally concluded that for designers, I believe creativity is gathering every experience, thoughts you've had and things you've seen and putting it on paper.

Creativity doesn't always come easily. In fact, its quite the opposite. I tend to seek creativity when I am most out of my comfort zone. I have always enjoyed putting myself out of my comfort zone, whether this was moving to a college where I knew nobody, travelling to a foreign country or trying something new. I have always enjoyed a challenge. Being somewhere unusual forces you to look around and take everything in. A few weeks ago, I travelled to Amsterdam. For someone with such terrible sense of direction, I had no choice but to become very aware of my surroundings even if I managed to get lost an embarrassing amount of times along the way. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, every second person cycles, there is said to be 250 bridges there, everybody is very open about everything. It is very different to places I had previously seen and travelled to. Experiencing new places, cultures and scenes such as this tends to broaden and awaken our creative minds.

As an exercise we were told to go for a walk around the campus and try to become more aware of our surroundings, to really look at things for what they are and not question it. We had to closely look at things we come across in our usual daily lives. I took close-up pictures on my phone of different scenes and objects such as a piece of rope or the bark of a tree. It really is amazing the beauty, patterns and shapes that can be seen in nature and inanimate objects when you really zoom in. The exercise reminded me of a particular scene in the film American Beauty. In this scene, a single plastic bag is blowing in the wind. The boy in the film is fascinated by this inanimate object which is described as 'dancing'. It is the fact that something which might usually passed unnoticed in our daily life had so much life in it. This scene and today's class reminds me that something so simple can have so much spirit and beauty when we decide look closely. Now I believe creativity is really found when we open our eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB0th8vNLxo