I am currently reading “How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer“, by Debbie Millman. I came across the book in Jason Santa Marie’s list of recommended reading.

In it, I found this beautiful gem: Paula Scher describing her creative process:

It’s a little difficult to say what I do first. I don’t do anything in any particular order. There’s a certain amount of intuitive thinking that goes into everything. It’s so hard to describe how things happen intuitively. I can describe it as a computer and a slot machine. I have a pile of stuff in my brain, a pile of stuff from all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen. Every piece of artwork I’ve ever looked at. Every conversation that’s inspired me, every piece of street art I’ve seen along the way. Anything I’ve purchased, rejected, loved, hated. It’s all in there. It’s all on one side of the brain.

And on the other side of the brain is a specific brief that comes from my understanding of the project and says, okay, this solution is made up of A, B,C. and D. And if you pull the handle on the slot machine they sort of run around in a circle, and what you hope is that those three cherries line up, and the cash comes out.

In respone to this Debbie Millman asks, “When you’re thinking chis way, is it something you’re doing alone, or with a lot of other people?”

I could be doing it right now. I’m doing it right here. My day is very packed, and it’s filled with many interruptions. I’m thinking about the brief while I’m in an open space with tons of people, in the office, with telephones. my staff, while gossiping with my partners, while thinking about what’s going on in the world, during whatever’s going on
at that moment—plus the brief.

I am conscious of resolving the brief, but I don’t think about it too hard. I allow the subconscious part my brain to work. That’s the accumulation of my whole life. That is what’s going on in the other side of my brain, trying to align with this very logical brief.

And I’m allowing that to flow freely, so that the cherries can line up in the slot machine. I don’t know when that’s going to happen. I’ve had periods of time when the cherries never line up, and that’s scary, because then you have to rely on tricks you already have up your sleeve—the tricks in your knowledge from other jobs. And very often you rely on this.

But mostly what you want to do is invent. And to invent, you have to take the odd and the strange combination of the years of knowledge and experience on one side of the brain, and on the other side, the necessity for the brief to make sense. And you’re drawing from that knowledge to make an analogy and to find a way to solve a problem, to find a means of moving forward—in a new way—things you’ve already done.

When you succeed, it’s fantastic. It doesn’t always happen. But every so often, you take a bunch of stuff from one side of your head, and a very logical list of stuff from the other side, and through that osmosis you’re finding a new way to look at a problem and resolve a situation.

This is the best explanation of the creative process I’ve ever read.