Three key ingredients to seeing more in your everyday life by Michael Wolff

Following on from the recent movies on creativity by John Cleese and Aaron Draplin comes a video from Michael Wolff. Michael is co-founder of design consultancy Wolff Olins and Intel recently put together a short video about the his three key ingredients to seeing more and finding inspiration. As usual I have made some notes on what Micheal says below the video for convenience.

Notes

Michael knows what he looks like but doesn't know what he looks like to others. A certain packaging is needed to present ourselves to the outside world.

When he attended school he obtained a wide education. Now designers get segregated into discrete subjects, so less likely to have the holistic education that Michael had.

He is highly tuned appreciator, he takes delight in everything he sees and says you need to have three muscles of seeing that allow you to see more in your everyday life.

  1. Curiosity - why is it big? why is it the colour it is? why? why? why?
  2. Appreciation, not just questioning but noticing. Take it all in.
  3. Imagination, enabled by the first two. Putting things together in unique combinations. [Much like the Juxtapositions talked about in John Cleese talk]

Professionally, his role is about helping clients find their voice and identity, not forcing his own design preferences on them. His first role was redesigning a magazine about muck spreading and cow dung and he redesigned the look using fonts that move people emotionally.

Michael suggests seeing is a musclar exercise, as is curiosity. If you are preoccupied you won't notice anything.

Be obsessively interested in everything.

View more inspirational videos here.

(via PetaPixel)