My wife gave me a short list of groceries to pick up on my way home from work last week. One of the items that proved to be elusive was the Velveeta cheese. As I searched up and down the aisles at Safeway I started thinking about the implications involved with where a store stocker places this non-cheese. For some reason the experience has stuck with me through the week. I keep coming back to it because I think it illustrates the “gray area” that marketer’s often find themselves when the try to do “the right thing.” Let me explain…

The Velveeta Paradox
If you owned a grocery store, where would you stock the Velveeta cheese? This question seems simple enough, but let me walk you through the moral implications embedded in this seemingly simple question…

Answer 1: The Dairy Aisle
It seems logical to stock Velveeta with the other cheeses. This is the first place a customer will typically look when searching for Velveeta. In case you didn’t know, Velveeta isn’t truly a cheese and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. This raises some problems. First, since dairy products need to be refrigerated it costs more for you to keep the product here. How do you pay for this extra cost? Do you markup the product and charge the customer for the luxury of finding the product where they expect it? Is it deceptive to sell imitation cheese as if it were actually cheese?

Answer 2: Near the Dairy Aisle
If you choose a location close to the dairy aisle you face a different moral conundrum. The nature of the refrigerated section of the grocery store is that there rarely will be a good spot near the cheese. If there is a shelf in eye sight of the cheese, chances are the items found here will not be a context where you would look to find cheese. Stacking bricks of Velveeta between loaves of bread or between coffee grounds puts the macaroni lubricant severely out of context. If you truly value your customers you won’t want them to miss the location and walk aimlessly around the store for hours. Or perhaps you are the kind of person who would hide the cheese intentionally so that customers will load their cart up with other non-essentials as they search for the holy grail of cheese products.

Answer 3: The End Cap
To compensate for the lack of visibility caused by taking Velveeta out of the context of the cheese section you may decide that an end cap is the best place to stock your loafs of lard. End caps, however, are the prime real estate in the store. Can you afford to give up this space (and possible revenue) just to make the orange jelly easier to find?

Answer 4: The Chip Aisle
Since imitation cheese is a common ingredient in dips, it might make sense to stock it in the chip aisle with the junk food. You are now presented with a different type of question. Velveeta has very few redeeming health merits. If you are concerned about the health of your customers, should you really be promoting I-can’t-believe-its-not-cheese in the first place? How do you avoid feeling guilty about providing a substance that kills people?

Answer 5: The Cigarette Counter
If your conscience gets the best of you, guilt might cause you to pull the toxic cubes off the shelves all together. Perhaps the cigarette counter is a more appropriate spot. You can add warning labels, age restrictions, and generally make people feel guilty about buying the irresistible yellow sludge. This would of course have the negative side effect of offending the responsible Velveeta user who uses it in moderation in the privacy of their own home.

Answer 6: Anywhere Else
There aren’t any other places left in the store that make sense to put the artery arsenic. Again, if you value your customer’s time it has to be in a place where they know to look. Additionally, as a store owner you will lose sales on Velveeta if people can’t find it. Can you afford to put it somewhere where it won’t be found?

I hope you found this analogy entertaining. As funny as it sounds, these are the kind of moral decisions that we all have to make on a daily basis. Although advertisers are often lumped into the same category as politicians and lawyers when it comes to measuring the “most loathed human beings,” almost all the marketers I have ever known have been good honest people. For the most part, the average human has nothing but good intentions when it comes to their careers. We want to help people. We want to produce quality products that people will find useful. We want to invest our lives in things that we consider good. Inevitable this will eventually put you in a catch-22 situation. Sometimes there just isn’t a safe answer to questions like these. If you are sincerely trying to be a good person you will regularly be confronted with situations that compromise your integrity. What do you do when you are between a rock and a hard place?

By the way, I am giving out high-fives to anyone who leaves a comment with a good slang phrase for Velveeta. I think my favorite so far is “the holy grail of cheese products.”

Oh, and if you were wondering where Velveeta actually gets stocked, you will usually find it in the refrigerated dairy section next to the other cheeses. You can be sure that the store passes the unnecessary refrigeration cost on to you…

Up until that moment creating art was easy. Before this, all that was needed was patience and practice. You find something beautiful and draw it. Let your eyes absorb the beauty and then channel that vision onto paper. I was a junior in high school when my art teacher rocked my world.

The assignment was to make something that represented our families. Sounds simple right? The catch was that this wasn’t a drawing. It wasn’t a photo. As we tried to pin down Mr. Schatz about what exactly we were supposed to create, he was elusive. The more we pressed him the more confusing the assignment became.

We knew what a drawing was. We know what pottery was. We knew what photos were. We knew what songs were. We knew what a poem was. These things defined “art” as we knew it. But this assignment was something confusing, something foreign to us. Finally, Mr. Schatz gave us some vague direction. He said something like,

“Think about what your family means to you. You know these people better than anyone else in the world. You can’t sum up the most important people in your life with a drawing. You can’t represent your love for your mom with a poem. When you think about your brothers and sisters you feel something inside you. Focus on that – and then make something that feels the same way.”

Needless to say, we left class that day bewildered. We struggled with it. The word that comes to mind to describe what I felt was “terrified.” I was supposedly one of the talented artists in the class and I had no idea what to make.

As I struggled with the assignment, things gradually became clear. Creating something was secondary to the process. It didn’t matter so much what we made, what mattered was learning to think creatively, passionately, and personally. Shapes, color, paint, tools – all the familiar skills we were learning – were all finally given a purpose beyond “making pretty things.” For the first time in our lives, this thing called “art” was connected to something inside of us. It was terrifying, yes, but it was also empowering. It was a pivotal moment in my creative development.

This was in a public school in the midwest, Wentzville High to be exact, but I still wonder what impact traditional education has on creative development. So much of what we learn in school is how to memorize and recite answers. We learn what hoops to jump through and in what order. Do a, b, and c and you earn a diploma. Where does creativity come into play? Creativity isn’t something that you can create a formula for.

As a graphic designer I get paid to work for so-called “non-creatives.” It is a challenge that I gladly welcome, but I can’t help but wonder if these people are merely missing a creative component that should have been taught in school. These brilliant people are enormously intelligent with successful careers and more wealth than I will ever see. And yet when it comes to a visual vocabulary they are infants. When conversations stray beyond the physical/quantifiable/literal I see the same thing that I saw back in high school: terrified bewilderment. And just like in school some people embrace the new world, others run for cover and the comfort of more easily measured occupations.

I suppose I have pretty much based my design career on my intuition. Through trial and error I have pretty much stumbled upon a set of concepts that work. While this has served me well, trusting your gut can only get you so far in the business world. If you really want to have an impact you need to supplement the intuitive mentality with concepts that can be appreciated by people who aren’t interested in trusting somebody else’s gut. And let’s face it, that is pretty much everyone. When paying thousands of dollars for an advertisement, a logo, or a website there are very people in the world who would be satisfied by the rational of “take my word for it.” I believe that is probably the biggest reason for the disconnect between “creative” and “non-creative” professionals. You can create a masterpiece logo, but if you can’t communicate why it will be effective, you will be sent back to your desk to execute client requested tasks that you know will make the logo worse.

Many designers are happy with this arrangement. Endless client revisions translates to more hours, which translates into more cash. It is easier to accept the destruction of your work if you can cash bigger checks as a result. Some designers can’t handle the hypocrisy and either drop out or become the stereotypical designer making fun of the clients behind their backs.

Luckily there is an alternative besides occupational hypocrisy and pessimistic burnout. The answer is to entrench yourself in the psychology and research behind what powers your intuition. Trusting your gut is important, but it isn’t enough. Your intuition works for a reason, and you can learn to explain why. If this type of thinking appeals to you, I urge you to read a few of the books I have been enjoying recently. They are:

“Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” is a great look at why people are fooled by marketing. I think that too many people assume that the public is dumb, when in fact people are amazingly consistent and intelligent creatures. This book comes to conclusions that you couldn’t arrive at if you simply trust your intuition.

“Predictably Irrational” is a book I am just starting but I am already hooked. The problem with trusting your gut is that it makes mistakes because so much in the world is counter-intuitive and irrational. Learning how to predict the irrational is a great skill to have.

Here is some practical advice if you are trying to supplement your intuition. Study your reactions to marketing, art, and design. Sensitize yourself so that you can take mental inventory of things that you see that “work” and what doesn’t. Question everything you see. Never take anyone’s word for anything. Filter everything and never accept surface level answers to questions that seem straight forward. As you carefully study your own responses to your surrounding as well as the reactions of others you can start to apply the things you learn to your work.

I just read an article on the Scientific American website called “An Easy Way to Increase Creativity. The article correctly points out that creativity has a great deal to do with context and outside factors influencing the individual. If you can identify the factors that increase creativity you might be able to increase your chances of finding creative solutions.

The article points out that one factor contributing to creativity is “psychological distance” which they define as ” anything that we do not experience as occurring now or here. In other words, if you can take yourself out of your current mindset you will be more likely to think creatively. That isn’t groundbreaking research, but it is interesting nevertheless.

Unfortunately, the article ends with some terrible advice when it comes to the practical application of the scientific studies. The article says,

“…there are several simple steps we can all take to increase creativity, such as traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places), thinking about the distant future, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely alternatives to reality.”

I think that is a pretty bad summary of some relatively intriguing research. Let me take it one point at a time.

1. Travel to faraway places.
This suggestion completely misses the point of the scientific research. Traveling to a faraway place is not the same as “psychological distance.” The point is to get your mind thinking differently, not to actually travel. Granted, a trip to a foreign country might inspire you, but traveling alone isn’t going to make you more creative.

2. Think about the distant future.
In the study, people are asked to think about themselves a year from now. Then they are asked to think of themselves solving an insight problem. This is a much more subtle way to think about a question than just saying, “Imagine how you would solve this problem in the distant future.” I guarantee if the question was phrased like that the answers wouldn’t be creative they would just involve people in silver suits and flying cars. That isn’t creativity, sorry.

3. Communicate with people who are dissimilar to you.
First of all, I can’t see where this suggestion is getting pulled from anywhere in the article. Maybe this one is just phrased badly. If it said “collaborate with people outside your normal circles,” it wouldn’t sound so bad. It feels condescending to me for some reason to assume that I would be surrounded by clones of myself.

4. Consider unlikely alternatives to reality.
Creativity requires that you do more than consider alternatives. You need to throw reality out the window and live there for a while. If the answer was reality then you wouldn’t need to be creative in the first place. I think it is funny that they added the word “unlikely” to that sentence to make it a little more redundant. I feel like this is saying “consider the unlikely, then get back to reality where you are more comfortable anyway.” Good luck with that.

The next sentence in the article says,

“Perhaps the modern environment, with its increased access to people, sights, music, and food from faraway places, helps us become more creative not only by exposing us to a variety of styles and ideas, but also by allowing us to think more abstractly.”

The result of our modern times is that creative thinking is increasingly rare. The research cited shows that by default most people find it hard to think about problems from anything but a very literal point of view. They have to be “tricked” into being creative with scenarios that inject psychological distance into the question. More music, food, people, and vacationing isn’t going to make you more creative.

I have been using Twitter a bit more recently and it has been fun to connect with web designers on Twitter and the huge numbers of designers using Twitter. If you are looking for designer to follow on Twitter, here are some links to websites that have created lists of some of the more noteworthy designers on Twitter. And while you are looking at all the designers who twitters, be sure to add me (@ade3) and I will gladly reciprocate.

100 Web Designer’s to follow on Twitter according to Digital Labs

50+ Designers on Twitter according to Vandelay Design

16 Genuite, Authentic Designers on Twitter according to Six Revisions

25 Most Popular Web Designers on Twitter according to Best Web Design Schools

44 Web Designers to Follow on Twitter according to Think Vitamin

50+ Designers on Twitter, Grain Edit’s favorites

I while back I made a post talking about the relationship I have found between how many hours of sleep I get and the quality of my creative output. I try to monitor myself constantly to see if I can find patterns to how I work. When am I at my best? When do my best ideas come? If I can recognize the factors that help boost my brain then maybe I can improve myself.

One of the things that I have been paying attention as I search for ways to be more creative is my dreams. Every once in a while I will wake up with answers to questions that I couldn’t answer the day before. Sometimes I will see things in my dreams that I can use when I wake up. Am I dreaming these things? It is safe to say that our brains are doing much more than resting when we sleep, but how can we capitalize on it?

I have never used drugs, but I can relate to artists who think that mind altering substances increase their creativity. Creativity could be defined as the ability to uncover the seemingly hidden solutions to situations. A creative person has the ability to see things that other’s would miss, no matter how long they look at the facts. It makes sense that someone who is extremely creative must have some “mind altering” abilities that other people don’t possess. How do they do it? Another word that creative people often get labeled as is “dreamer.” Maybe there is something to that stereotype.

Sleep allows our minds to do things that we can’t do when we are awake. In dreams we are not constrained by the rules of reality. Anything is possible. That is exactly the state that a person’s mind needs to be in if they are going to create something that doesn’t yet exist! It is a shame that so many of us dismiss our dreams as bizarre annoyances that prevent us from enjoying a good night’s sleep.

So how do we harness the power of our dreams? How can we optimize our sleep to maximize our creativity? That’s a tough question, but I have some ideas that I will share in my next post. Right now it’s bed time and I feel like dreaming.

I know what you are going to say. Another blog? Well, yes, I am adding my voice to the Red Rocket Blog. If you haven’t heard, I recently started working for Red Rocket Media Group up the road in Windsor. I love the place so far, and a blog is just one of the things they do to keep ahead of the curve.

My first post went live yesterday and I am looking forward to talking about design again regularly. When I wrote for Be A Design Group and the audience of mainly designers it was a bit like “preaching to the choir” so the expanded audience should give me plenty of new material to explore. After all, if a designer can’t communicate with non-designers he isn’t much of a designer. That’s my opinion at least. I hope you add Red Rocket to your regular reading and jump into the conversation by leaving comments. See you over there!

Recently I have been trying to rustle up interest in a book club for Northern Colorado designers. The club will be called Co.de. Read and I have been handing out “decoder” business cards to every designer I know. (If you haven’t got one yet contact me and I will send you one.) So in anticipation of getting into a routine of regular reading, I have spent some time trying to finish the books that inevitably stack up in an unread pile on the corner of my desk.

One of the books I am enjoying is called “Modern Art and the Death of a Culture.” It was recommended my my dad and although you can’t tell from the title it deals with the relationship between art and the Christian church. Here is a paragraph that hit really close to home for me:

“Today it is well known that within evangelical Christian circles there is little interest in the arts. As a change becomes apparent, as the younger generation born and raised within these circles comes to understand the importance of the arts, all kinds of problems and tensions arise. Any sort of critical way of thinking is almost completely lacking. There is no artistic insight, nothing to point to, no answer to the relevant questions of the rising generation. Many want to be artists in a Christian sense – but have to find the answer for themselves. How should they go about it? What does it mean? Many have turned away from Christianity or, more tragically, from Christ, as they have come to feel that, if this vital aspect of human life is outside religion or faith, then something basic must be defective in the faith.”

That pretty much sums up my thoughts about “Christianity” lately. Any spiritual growth I experience any more seems to have nothing to do with my Church. That bothers me. Honestly it makes me wonder if I really am a Christian and if I want to even claim to be a part of it. Something is wrong when I can get more spiritual stimulation from playing with my iPhone than sitting in a Church for an hour and a half. I tell myself that there are Christians out there that are thriving and alive, but it’s hard to remember.

I guess this post got a little negative, so I feel like I should apologize. I was criticized the last time I ripped on my church so let me try to wrap this up on a positive note. We live in a time where it has never been easier to grow, whether that is spiritually, physically, artistically, emotionally, or intellectually. It is really exciting to be more connected than any civilization in the history of mankind. I hope you are taking advantage of it and growing.

I have redesigned this site several times over the last four years and I always thought it was a bit of a shame that the designs had to disappear from the internet after the new design is applied. So it has been in the back of my mind for a while to convert my old designs into WordPress themes that anyone can freely use. That turned out to be a bit more work than I had anticipated, but I have been making steady progress and it looks like I will have three themes available for download later this month.

The tentative names for my three themes are going to be Minima White, Zen Parchment, and Blue Wood. The themes will be hosted on Cath3dral, and I am hoping to use this as an opportunity to expand Cath3dral into an actual site, instead of the place holder that is currently there.

One of the unique things about my themes will be the integration of Font Burner. This will give users access to any of the 1000 fonts available through Font Burner without having to mess with sIFR at all. My Font Burner plugin was actually the result of the work I have been doing on my themes. It started out as just the control panel that gave the WordPress admin the ability to customize the fonts used in my themes, and grew into an actual plugin.

So stay tuned, and contact me if you are interested in testing my themes before they are publicly released.

I got an email this week from a person who was interested in comparing graphic design and chess. Her idea was to write a chess rule book based on the principles of design. I don’t know if that is possible, but if she can do it, I would love to read it. The whole thing has got me thinking again about how the mental activity of chess and design are similar.

The connection for me is that Chess is a game of creativity. Within the rules and structure there is an infinite amount of possibilities. You sort out the potential winning ideas from the sure losers. You avoid traps and stick clear of easily predictable moves. You narrow down your options until you are left with a few “rough drafts” that might work. No guarantees, just your best effort and the hope that it will work out the way you plan.

You also have to predict the actions and tendencies of your opponent. When you play well you are actually controlling their actions and reactions just like a well designed object will. Things fall in place and you are successful. When you play poorly, the best intentions – the seemingly fool-proof strategy- falls apart and you lose.

Design also is more of a problem solving activity than just the “make it look pretty” mentality that defines our profession to the uneducated. A creative mind can overcome a deficit of “pieces” by understanding how to use limited assets in powerful combinations. With a firm understanding of “the game” we can see possibilities that are hidden from the average person.

If you are interested in exploring the chess/design metaphor further, you can browse the Be A Design Group archive where I have talked about the connections in the past.