Better Magic
2016
Uses your unique creativity to deliver new and inspiring ideas.
ISBN-13: 978-0953107346
Paperback: 256 pages
Size: 180mm X 120mm
Shrink-wrap
Introduction
This is a book that offers you some techniques for generating ideas.
However, rather than describing brainstorming processes that already exist, I look to the unconscious as a source of inspiration.
You already carry this unconscious material with you, all the time, as a repository, a library of information inside yourself.
The trick is to use your awareness in order to make it manifest.
From paper, to objects, to process – my book details a series of exercises that you can use to build a relationship with this unconscious element.
To assist me, I call on the influences of art, psychology, experimental writing, anthropology and concrete poetry.
Always with the intention of waking you up, overturning conventional processes and finding the best, most innovative ideas.
It’s a journey to the self.
Take a deep breath.
Contents
WORKING WITH PAPER
Write It Down / Read Down The Page / Words Are Clues / Employ Ambiguity / Integrate Mistakes / Find Ideas In Unexpected Places / Use Cut-Ups / Magnetise Audacity / Cutting Room Floor Technique / Experimental Conditions Persist / The Fold / Invite Nonsense / The Noigandres / Try Word Games / Start In The Wrong Place / Enduction
WORKING WITH OBJECTS
Use Your Hands / Follow The Street / Paper Plane / Chinese Tiles / Be Physical / Sixty Seconds / No Accidents / Provoke Bad Ideas / Remember The Anonymous / Integrate The Reverse / Inverted Constable / Printing Upside Down / Work Backwards / Rename Things / Enduction
WORKING WITH PROCESS
Apply Your Instinct / Find Double Meanings / Latoa / Make A Pack Of Cards / Shuffle The Group / Create Conflict / Integrate Feelings / Water And Sand / Trust What You Can’t See / Fringes Of Perception / Evoke Dream Analysis / Use Magic / Appurtenances / Better Magic / Enduction
NOTES ON THE CREATIVE UNCONSCIOUS
Sample
As you read the book, write your ideas down.
It seems obvious. However, in most cases, people don’t do this, so the concepts escape. They can’t remember the exact version of words that made their thoughts so unique.
Ideas have a fleeting life. Writing concretises them on the page, makes them real. It gives them substance.
If you don’t download from your brain to the page your ideas on a regular basis, you clog up your mind with old thoughts, now past their sell-by date and therefore don’t create a space for new ideas to come through.
So buy a cheap notepad and pen and write all your ideas down. Every time you have a thought about creativity, your business, products or the client – make a note of it.
Even if you work visually, still write your ideas down.
If the blank page looks empty and frightening, start at the end of your notepad and work backwards, as if you are filling in void spaces, like colouring in a drawing in a child’s picture book. Each day complete only a single sheet of paper.
Stalk your big idea slowly. When the notepad is full, your project will be complete.