Aster + Sage
stay in touch!email twitter    special deals!newsletter    updates!rss email

Posts Tagged ‘creative thinking’

What’s In Your Back Pocket?

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Your Back Pocket watercolor

Do you know what you’re good at? What’s your talent?

Is it something you use every day? Or do you store your skills in your back pocket, waiting for the right day to pull them out and surprise yourself?

I’m going to take a guess…I think you’ve got some back-pocket skills. An ability (or two or three) that you plan to use in the future, but right now you’re not ready to flex your god-given talents.

Bad idea. Your skills are what makes you unique; what helps you interact with others and navigate the world. For example…you’re good at juggling. You used to like to juggle, but haven’t in years. If you juggled once in a while, you’d be practicing something your muscles know how to do and your mind finds satisfying. It’d give you a little ego boost– what’s not to like in that?

And maybe you try a trick or two. Surprise yourself. Test yourself. You will find [insert skill of yours you're storing in your back pocket] gives you an energy rush that’ll get your mind in gear. Might kick off an idea or two. Wouldn’t be a bad thing. In fact, could be a very good thing, and it’s free to try. Right?

Are you’re thinking “Who does this?”  That’s the right question…the answer is YOU.

Get to it. Let me know what happens ['cause I know already, it's bound to be good!]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Creative Thinking + Productivity | No Comments »

Try It: Play With Squares

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Nice: looking at a pretty picture.
Nicer: your own picture [no guarantees about it being pretty].
This exercise will have you forming relationships with totally inanimate objects, you just wait and see…

Tear two colorful pages from a catalog or magazine. More colors are better.

random catalog

Use a paper cutter or a pair of scissors to cut the paper into strips, then 1″-ish squares. The size isn’t all that important.

Start arranging all the pieces on top of a sheet of white copy paper.

organizing squares

As long as you’re not recreating the pages as they looked before you cut them up [you sneak!] any arrangement is fine. Just try to organize them in a way that’s pleasing to you.

organized squares

Once you’ve got all those squares laid out on the paper, move it aside [don't mess up the squares, leave them as they are] and get a new sheet of copy paper. You’re going to fill this paper with squares but none will overlap [see photo below]–  this version will be an iteration [another version] of the first sheet of squares.
This means you’ll have to choose individual squares from the first sheet and glue them down in a neat, linear grid. Look at the first sheet, choose a square that most looks like the area you pulled it from, and glue it down. Repeat.

organizing squares

Here’s what you’ll find– you start to form a relationship with the squares you pull off the first sheet of paper and attach to the new sheet. Is this the right square? How does it look with the one I just glued down?

I highly doubt that your finished project will look glamorous, or make sense to any unwitting bystanders, but this was an exercise in process.

squares are all arranged

It’s one thing to see something and get a great feeling, but the idea here is to actively engage in the process of making something. Because we knew from the outset that the final project is unlikely to be a thing of beauty, it’s a heck of a lot easier to let go of preconceived notions and enjoy the process.
I hope this gave your mind a little 7th inning stretch.

[Postscript: When I was posting this I noticed I must have used the reverse side of the 2nd catalog page-- I don't see those pillow colors anywhere]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Creative Thinking + Productivity | No Comments »

Try It: Look for Color

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

I’ve got a little exercise I do when everything around me’s looking kinda bland. In fact, the blander the better.

A wintry landscape is perfect but you can try this anywhere, indoors or out.

It’s pretty simple. I start by looking for anything that’s red. Once I’ve seen all the red there is to see, I work my way through the rest: orange yellow green blue purple.

Here’s what happens.

I’ll think to myself ‘there’s nothing here that could be red’ and I start to look… and almost inevitably I will see something red. Though maybe it’s more orange… and it begins a conversation in my head about whether it is red…or orange.

After I’ve found all the red stuff I move on to the next color.

It’s not so much an exercise about color. It’s really a way to see how much I didn’t see before I started looking.

So try it right now: look around you and find everything that’s red. Make sure to determine if what looks red is really red to you, not any other color (If you don’t, making your way through all the colors gets lame really fast) and then move on to orange.

See anything new?

P.S. I included this photo in case you’re really at a loss for something to look at [click on it to make it bigger]. But the real world is a far better place to try this out.

nyc vendor cart

Tags: , ,
Posted in Creative Thinking + Productivity | 2 Comments »

Opening Your Mind

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Recently I’ve found myself talking a lot about the importance of being creative.

I didn’t realize that this year’s commencement speaker at RISD had just spoken about the same subject. Sir Ken Robinson, described on Wikipedia as “an internationally recognized leader in the development of innovation and human resources” shares great insight on the subject.  I highly recommend watching his speech here: Our (and Your) RISD.


In a nutshell, Robinson advises people to cherish diversity and to create the right conditions for your creativity to flourish. But my one sentence synopsis  is like saying that you’ll be rich if you make things and sell them at a profit. Better to hear this from the intellect’s mouth, not mine. Go watch it and you won’t be disappointed.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Creative Thinking + Productivity | No Comments »