Another dose of the creative process has arrived. This time all the way from Mumbai in India.
For new readers:
Much has been written about The Creative Process, which in its purest form is simply a way of solving a problem. That sounds simple, doesn’t it? Creativity and its process, contrary to popular belief, is not just reserved for artists and designers. I believe that everyone can benefit from learning and understanding the numerous ways of the creative process. I will invite people to share their own personal creative processes with us and hope this will help you with identifying your own.
Constantine Lykiard is Creative Director at Fitch in Mumbai, India.
I decided to ask a close friend of Constantine to tell us something about the man himself.
“Constantine is Greek, and has now lived in London longer than he lived in Athens. He’s an excellent cook, enormously sociable, a larger than life character with a fantastic sense of humour. He owns a fabulous bloodhound, is very generous with his time and skills and extremely good with young people. Constantine is a passionate photographer and also paints. He loves to sail and is a keen gardener, having had allotments well before they became fashionable. Constantine moved to Mumbai to work for Fitch about a year ago.”
Over to Constantine!
The Creative Process – Constantine Lykiard
Staring at a blank canvas, a black hole, a pristine sheet of A4 paper or the latest sexiest monitor Apple can throw at you, will very rarely ever get you anything other than you re-arranging your own prejudices.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that. A style, a design philosophy, an aesthetic thesis, can all take years of this re-arrangement before they become a balanced visual grammar with exquisite results and longevity of appreciation. It just isn’t for me.
In the commercial world of retail design there is far too much of the ‘this the way we have done it before’ syndrome and that is the perfect trigger for my creative process to kick in and create some havoc before settling back to a commercially viable proposition.
You see in my world you only get to ask the why not question once and if you hesitate you end up re-arranging not only your own prejudices but those of others too.
I design to tickle the desires of others and they do not necessarily like what I like.
I have to create something they like and since retail is, amongst other things, about differentiation every blank canvas, every black hole, every pristine sheet of A4 paper and the latest sexiest monitor Apple can throw at you, a new beginning.
For this to work you need to DISRUPT the rest is common sense… ohhh and never take no for an answer.
Children are the most creative because they have no prejudices, so act like one when you can.
WHY NOT?
Why not? indeed! I want to thank Constantine for his generosity, his wisdom and for agreeing to take part in the CP Express:-)