ARTiculation: Peering into our work

When you've got a first date with that guy you met at the pub last weekend, you invite your girlfriends over for a drink and a Fashion Week sized fashion show of every outfit you have in your closet — you want to pick the best one.When you pick out a snowboard, you bring a few buddies along to make sure you're picking the best deck art you can.

Conversation is the breeding ground for coming up with the best possible solution in most areas of life, including for those of us aiming to work in a creative field. It may seem unrelated to marketing, graphic design or fine art, but picking an outfit or board art is a matter of creative expression. You want to make sure you've picked the one that best represents you in a visually appealing way, and having your peers evaluate your idea makes a stronger outcome.

Pielab is a small bakery in Alabama that came up with a very simple idea: bring together people with similar interests (to eat pie), and conversation will spark and take on a life of its own. The owners are in the creative industry — all designers of some sort — and felt that the best way to create a more dynamic idea in any area (urban planning, graphic design, fine art, etc.), is if more than one person is involved. Creativity is a funny thing: Although the very definition of creativity is the ability to think ‘outside the box' and come up with innovative solutions, it's very common for creatives to have a flash of a few initial ideas and to get stuck on those. It's also very common for us to develop an emotional attachment to an idea, which renders us unable to see the flaws in it. But what Pielab suggests (and I agree wholeheartedly) is that once you've got those initial ideas, taking them to a brainstorming session with your colleagues can bring to the surface a number of other ones that are stemmed from yours, or just add the little extra touch to your original idea that you needed to make it great.

Peer review is something that's become increasingly important in my program (Graphic Design). In addition to helping you create a dynamic piece, it can also help you realize your affinity to a piece and learn to defend your creative decisions. Sitting in class during a peer review session the other day, one of my classmates designs was being picked apart by the professor and a few students. But rather than agreeing with their advice, he realized how strongly he believes in the original design he'd made and began defending it. Learning how to explain and defend your creative outcome is important, because eventually you will need to be able to do this with a client. “I chose red because…” or “I think we should advertise this way because...”

Through the evaluation of your creative ideas, you can hone both your skills and your ability to speak about your choices in an articulate manner. Welcoming respected peers' ideas into your creative process does not make you less talented, it means you're committed to coming up with the best possible outcome.

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
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