A Fresh Perspective

Often in the day-to-day as designers, we get locked into an "align all" mentality, micro-managing every pixel set before us. Sometimes it’s important for us to find intriguing ways of executing our creativity.

New media theorist Peter Lunenfeld describes this need in relation to software itself…

"Consider the command "snap to grid." It instructs the computer to take hand-drawn lines and plot them precisely in Cartesian space. Artists regularly disable the "snap to grid" function the moment they open an application because the gains in predictability and accuracy are balanced against the losses of ambiguity and expressiveness."

A professor of mine once taught a course with the main objective of developing innovative processes and breaking free from disciplinary boundaries. Our team attempts to do this weekly in a little exercise we like to call our creative breakfast. In attempt to disable our snap to grid function we decided to design something using an unexpected medium. We created a 3-tiered cake with a healthy twist– it was built solely out of veggies.

Getting away from the typical print and web media for a couple of hours really helped us to keep a fresh perspective.

How you can make the Tonic veggie cake yours:
Create the base by slicing a head of lettuce into a 2-inch thick tier. Line with broccoli, red bell pepper slices and orchids. Use red cabbage for the second tier and line with cauliflower and carrot slices. Complete your third tier with an additional slice of lettuce, and line with carrots, jicama, and cherry tomatoes. Top with a flower made from cabbage and cauliflower…or try your hand at carving a flower out of a radish. The key here is to have fun with it, get off of the computer, and find a new form of creative expression.

Duct tape day

On May 8, 2007, for our weekly Creative Breakfast, several students visited our studio from Hillcrest Christian School to teach us how to craft wallets and purses from duct tape. Our main “teacher” was Sammy, 9 years old, who also brought along his two brothers for the demonstration. Also joining was his schoolmates Christian and Brandon (Jason’s sons). See photos from the day.

I originally met Sammy on my son Christian’s 4th grade field trip to Sacramento. On the trip I noticed Sammy had an incredibly beautiful, orange duct tape messenger bag - with slots for pens, and ID and more on the inside. I thought he got it from someone, but to my complete astonishment, he told me that he had made it himself. He shared with me how his older neighbor had recently taught him how to make all sorts of items from duct tape and that this was one of his personal designs. I thought to myself, “wow”, this kid is only 9 years old! I had seen duct tape stuff in the past, but not from a kid. So I immediately asked if he would be interested in stopping by our studio to teach our team how to make a few simple designs.

We started the day at 7:30 am on a school day and served breakfast for the crew from Brent’s Deli. Sammy proceeded to give instructions for making a simple men’s wallet from duct tape. Later, he showed the girls how to modify the design to create a small clutch purse. After about an hour our creative juices were flowing and the team began creating all sorts of interesting designs. These kids thought we had the best job on the planet - free breakfast, making “crafts” on the floor and joking around the whole time. You call this work?!

In the end, we all had fun and these kids were on top of the world. Best of all: we helped nurture the creative spirit in the youth of our community. Something these kids will never forget.