Making What's In Your Head or What's In the World Already

I totally agree with Adam Savage that when it comes to making something that emulates pop culture or making something you’ve thought of on your own, neither is better or worse. I do, however, think that the two processes are different, and the creative and problem-solving processes are different between the two.

The differences are so fascinating to me. My older son will be five in a month, and he has recently become really into what he calls “art projects,” and what often turn into elaborate “makes.” What is most interesting to me is his process of coming up with ideas, and what he, of limited physical competence, can do with his ideas. A few weeks ago he got it into his head that he wanted to make a helmet out of paper. He had a VERY definite idea in his head of what he wanted it to look like. He tried drawing the shape on paper, but got so frustrated that he couldn’t draw what he was picturing in his head, and neither could he articulate it for someone else to help him. There were tears.

After Daddy helped him calm down and used the computer to help him draw a perfectly symmetrical shape, he wanted to punch holes on either side of the bottom edge and tie a string through that would go under his chin. He didn’t realize that if you do that the paper will bend and the hat will site flat on top of your head instead of perpendicular to the floor. He’s four! He clearly wanted the hat to look a certain way on his head, and came up with a plan to execute it, but it didn’t work. There were more tears. But then he said, okay, wore it for a second, then abandoned it. “It’s not really right anyway,” he said.

I think about this because I think the visualization of what you want the finished product to be is the key difference between your own ideas and something from pop culture. When you are emulating something you’ve seen before, someone else has done that visualization already, and your job is to execute. You want to reproduce something as faithfully as possible, in all its physical aspects and capabilities. Your work is, in effect, limited by what someone else previously visualized.

When you make something of your own, you do the visualizing yourself. But then the execution can be much more flexible, and if something doesn’t work you can always change it. Or change your mind halfway through about what you wanted it to look like or do. This flexibility allows you to be more creative from a design perspective, but doesn’t necessarily challenge you in the same way with restrictions. You may actually be more creative in your problem solving when your final product must look a certain way or do a certain thing.

So I think that both types of projects challenge the maker in different ways, and allow the maker to be creative in different ways. Either way gives makers abundant learning opportunities. Either way lets makes be creative problem solvers. And even better? Do both!