"Creativity defined and unlocked"

This article brings together the most crucial knowledge about creativity. We will show you what creativity actually is, the steps of the creative process, and how you can become more creative right away.​

What is Creativity?

The creative process is the action of making new connections amid old ideas or distinguishing relationships between concepts. Creative thinking is not just about producing something out of nothing but is instead about taking existing concepts and ideas and linking those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done before.

The Creative Process

1) Collect new material. Firstly, you discover. Throughout this stage you focus on a) studying and researching particular material directly connected to your brief and b) acquiring wide-ranging material by becoming engrossed with an extensive range of concepts.

2) Methodically work over the materials in your mind. In this stage, you assess what you have learned from your research and test fitting current and past ideas together.

3) Produce a number of finalized concepts. Produce a small number of your best ideas and concept combinations. This gives you the opportunity to centralize your attention on your best concepts.

4) Structure and develop your idea based on feedback. For any idea to succeed, you must release your concepts out into the world, submit it to criticism, then choose the most popular concept or adapt it as needed.

How to Be More Creative

Step 1: It’s a process…Give yourself permission to produce junk

In all creative endeavors, you have to give yourself the OK to create junk. Occasionally you’ll have to write ten rotten pages just to realize that you penned one good sentence in the sixth line of the fourth page.

Producing something worthwhile and exciting is like being a treasure hunter. You have to filter through pounds of muck and dirt and silt just to find a fleck of treasure in the middle of it all.

Step 2: Create content on a schedule

"Practice makes perfect"

Force yourself to create constantly. Performing your creative skills repetitively is the only way to become great at it.

If you want to produce your finest creative work, then don't leave it up to choice. Set a schedule for your work. Genius appears and succeeds when a person shows up enough times to get the mediocre ideas out of the way.

Step 3: Finish your project

Finish your work! Stop exploring, preparing, and formulating and just do the work or make the project or material. It doesn't matter how good or how bad it is. You don't need to produce world-class work on the first try; you just need to demonstrate to yourself that you have what it takes to produce a solid piece of work.

Stop evaluating what you should make and just practice and improve by actually making something.

Step 4: Stop judging your own work

"Don't be your own harshest critic!"

It is normal to judge your work… everyone does it. It is natural to feel disheartened that your design isn't as pleasing as you hoped it would be, or that you're skills aren’t improving. But it is imperative to not let your dissatisfaction stop you from continuing to do the work.

You should exercise enough self-empathy to not let your overwhelming self-judgement take control. Sure, you should absolutely care about your work, but don't get so stern and somber about it that you lose the love of your craft. Don't let judgment prevent delivery.

Step 5: Share Your Work

The world needs people who put creative work out into the world, to inspire others and to make an impact. What seems artless to you is often magnificent to someone else. But you'll never know that unless you choose to share.

Even sharing you work with your inner circle will give you important creative feedback that can only help you grow and improve. It is this feedback that can demonstrate the effectiveness of a great creative team.

To get all the benefits of Array or to just find out how Array can help your creativity thrive, sign up here for free.

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