Creative Strategies Icons + Micro Projects

Intro: This is a sample of work from Creative Strategies, one of the best courses at accd. The goal of the class is of course learning to be more creative and developing better creative processes to solve problems. Each week we are given a creative/ design challenge and we then have one week to solve it as creatively as possible.


Creative Strategy Icons: I created these to help keep track of my own mental processes and also to quickly communicate to an audience how i was thinking at a certain phase in the design process. The strategies are fairly loose so actually there are infinite variations within these themes for creativity.



Seven Day Journal: The task was to create a journal with the theme "What is left of the Day?" The creative strategy i used in this case was problem framing to redefine what it meant to experience a day. For me one day was a beginning and an end and this is how i see the completion of a sketch book. So one day for my journal is one completed sketchbook.



Copic Sketch Chess Set: This challenge involved using repurposed or recycled materials. One of my other accd nicknames besides "Stephensanity" is "The Recycler." This is because you will often find me during crunch times digging through trash or repurposing materials to create last minute projects that turn out relatively well. This is one of those cases. Time was less than three hours to concept and final execution.



LEGO Futurist Farm Track-Tor: Final challenge was to create your own strategy and project. I've been wanting to do something with LEGO for a long time so i finally did for this project. My self project was to create and model my own genre of LEGO. I called my strategy "let GO" applied to "LEGO." "LetGo" means trusting all your training and life expierience to create something that is orginal and good. We train as designers to be good so trust your skills, draw from your unique life experiences and have faith that whatever you make will be unique because your life is unique. And it will be good because you've been trained well and have all that practice under your belt.

note to self: do some sketches and put LEGO project into book..integrate LEGO into design process