Old Writings

Crayola Brain

I was shopping with the kids last night. As usual, Jacob (3) was taking his sweet time in the
parking lot, even though we had freezing rain and some stiff wind (that's what we get for
living in Michigan). As a normal adult, my first instinct was to be annoyed by his insistence
that he stomp in every puddle from the van to the entrance of Kmart. As I was about start
doing the normal exasperated dad "would you hurry up" thing, a thought popped into my
head from out of nowhere.

"Are you such a 'grown-up' that you've forgotten how much fun it is to jump into a puddle?"

The thought had a very annoyed tone, like that of a teenager. It was like a mental dope slap. In a mili-second, my brian switched over into creative mode, and I began to notice just how cool and abstract the reflections of the lights and signs looked in the water on the pavement. I was smiling. I was filled with a new feeling of excitement, the same feeling I get when I'm hot on the tail of a new concept or design.

My creative side kicked in because I stopped being a proper adult for a moment, and let myself be a child again. That is the essence of creative thought. The innate question in a child's mind of "what if" is creativity to the core. It's a sad thing that as we grow older, we allow the world to pound that question to the back of the brain instead keeping it on the front burner.

I went to an AdCLub sponsored lunch seminar recently where the speaker, Judith Rich (Exec VP and Worldwide Creative Office for Ketchum) talked on the subject of "Where has all the creativity gone? (and how do we get it back)". The major focus of the talk was that in order for creativity to exist, one must return to the same mental conditions a child has. The suspension of disbelief, the faith in the impossible, the joy of imagination and make-believe. These traits we see in almost all kids form the foundation for creative thought. Somehow, adults forget these things along the way.

So, since then, I've started doing most of my sketches and layout ideas in crayon (from a set I got from Judith). I'm trying to be sillier at dinner with the kids, instead of trying to have a "nice, quiet meal" (an impossibility at my house anyway). "What's for dinner tonight, dad?" "Monkey Brains in Squid Sauce" "Daa-ad!" I've been reading Shel Silverstein again.

And I find myself looking at the reflections of a Kmart sign in a puddle on a cold, wet, wintry, ugly evening and saying to myself "Hey that looks cool, maybe I could use something like that in a project someday"

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