Imagine receiving a wedding invitation…but it’s not just a normal invitation, but a record player…and it’s not just a normal record player, but a PAPER record player. Pretty cool, right?
Or imagine receiving your daily 24 Hours or Metro Vancouver on your way to school and reading news that you didn’t think would happen for another 10 years…or news that you NEVER thought would happen…not your ordinary government screws this up…or someone gets stabbed but things that you imagine would happen in an utopia or your ideal world..!
Wicked ideas but only in my dreams, right? They can never happen in real life. WRONG! These things have happened (yes, it’s possible to make a record player out of paper) and Kelli Anderson is the creative mind behind these projects.
As an artist and a designer, she has worked on numerous projects like these that challenge the norms. In her words, she “finds hidden talents of every day things.” She shares her experiences and her thoughts on creativity during her Ted Talk: Design to Challenge Reality.
A lot of things in life are taken for granted, mainly due to the fact that we’ve been overly exposed to them and we know what they are meant to do – or so we’ve been told. For example, a pen is a pen and we write with it. A spoon is a spoon and we eat with it. And it is precisely these expectations that hinders our creativity and leave us complacent and comfortable with what we know. We would never challenge these notions and say ‘no, you are not supposed to write with a pen; you are supposed to…pick your nose with it.’
According to Kelli, when we make things, we decide what we want to do with those expectations. We can stick to the norm and do what we’ve always known, or we can take the risk and try to break it and make something totally new. She calls it the DISRUPTIVE WONDER, which confound expectations. “World is full order that doesn’t necessarily deserve our respect. The moment we realize it, it enables us to be creative and it challenges us to mess things up.”
Sounds like fun, right? We are being ENCOURAGED to mess things up, for once! It’s not about being tidy and keeping things neat anymore, messy is A-OK!! How liberating…but oddly enough, not many people do it. Why not?
Well…I think it’s partly because of the cultural norms or the way most of us have been raised. Like I said, most of us have constantly been told to keep our rooms clean, tidy up after ourselves, put our toys away after playing with them and etc. etc. ever since we were little kids. It is not acceptable to mess things up. So, for us to try and change that all of a sudden…well, it just doesn’t seem natural. In fact, it doesn’t seem right. I mean, how can I possibly mess something up that works so well? Why would I? That just seems silly…and won’t there be consequences? All these questions rush to my head when thinking about doing things differently. It’s simply a concept that is alien to us.
Also, there’s the fact that most of us, as human beings, do not like taking risks. We don’t want to go against the grain because then, we risk looking silly in the eyes of others. I mean, how dumb did I sound earlier when I suggested that pens could be used for picking nose? It’s the critical voice that Moura talked about in class. As much as we would like to shut it off and not listen to it, the truth is, most of us DO listen to it. And we often let it get the best of us and hinder us from doing the great. Until we can master the art of shutting that stupid voice off, creativity will be a difficult task..!
And lastly, I think we are not asking the right questions or maybe simply not asking enough questions. Maybe some of us have no fear of disrupting order and are quite good at not listening to that stupid voice in our heads…but still not creative? Well, maybe then, we are just not pushing ourselves far enough. Ask questions. Ask them again. Ask in a different way. Ask why. Ask how. Ask the what-about’s and the what-if’s. (gotta love the Ask phase of the design process! 😉 ) Push beyond the expectations. I mean, why doesn’t paper have audio qualities? Maybe it can… How can it give it an audio quality?… What about this…what about that…and BAM! Here’s your paper record player wedding invitation!
Kelli has definitely done some really cool, innovative work. I encourage you guys to check them out on her website kellianderson.com or listen to her Ted Talk and go and mess things up!!!