L4 ITAP Lecture: Fill yourself full of ideas and understanding

What is the key to a reliable and creative process ? There are five key points:

• Research
• Practice
• Visual Vocabulary
• Inspiration
• Audience

Although they are all as important as each other, today I am going to focus  on the two points that help me the most during my creative process, Research and Inspiration.

Research

“In the broadest sense of the word, the definition of research includes any gathering of data, information and facts for the advancement of knowledge.” – Martyn Shuttleworth

“Research is a process of steps used to collect and analyse information to increase our understanding of a topic or issue.” – John Creswell

The research process consists of three key steps:

• Posing a question
• Collecting data to answer the question
• Presenting an answer to the question

Research itself is an intrinsic aspect of design practice and an essential part of problem solving. It is an investigation that remains a fundamental part of any creative process. There are two forms of research; primary and secondary. In primary research, there is no data available for the research, this means that the researcher has to start from scratch. If you are doing secondary research, the researcher already has the necessary data  available. This data or information may be gathered from organisations or publications. The most important point is that there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

Visual research is the practice of creating pictures, impressions, appearances, visualising, rendering, projections, illustrations, diagrams, images etc.

How do illustrators/visual communicators research ? 

• By drawing, collecting, reading, surrounding themselves with things that inspire them.
• They should be involved in a constant process of enquiry.

Boredom is the enemy of the artist – Paul Davis

So we must ask ourselves, why is research important ?

Through the visual practice of observation, collecting, studying and exploring a subject, topic or theme, the more we can contribute to a deeper understanding of the subject.

Inspiration 

Where do illustrators, designers, etc find inspiration ?

By collecting, collating, observation and drawing.

It is important as an artist to document everything that helps your ideas grow, these could be pictures, drawings, cut outs etc. As an artist, your ideas progress from previous ideas, it’s how you improve on your own work and skills. When collecting visual data it is important to show where you got it from and how it applies to your work. Also, experiment with your work, it shows an understanding of what you have learnt and how you applied it to your work.

“Sketching, thinking, reading…I feed as much information from various sources into my brain and let it filter down to one elegant solution…I hope.” Rian Hughes

Inspiration can be drawn from all aspects of our daily lives. It’s the way we view and perceive things that matters the most. By relating our understanding of various subjects, concepts and ideas to the ‘real world’ the more we begin to think about what is possible; and in the realms of your imagination, anything is.