Imprints of vision

Creativity does not exist in a vacuum. It is the result of the creator's work, the embodiment of his personal view on certain things, an imprint of his vision. If you ask different people to draw something non-existent that requires imagination, then everyone will create their own unique drawing that will reflect their own vision. Everyone knows what the sun looks like, but everyone has their own memories and imagination about it – someone likes to sunbathe on the beach, someone hates the heat and avoids the sun, someone likes to photograph elongated shadows in the golden hour, and someone has a technical interest and researches how sunlight is converted into electricity. Different experiences form a unique vision of the same things – the author's vision.

So what is it – a vision? Let's compare side by side the concepts of "watching" and "seeing", just not in the plane of a sense organs, but in the plane of meaningfulness. We all look at the world – how it surrounds us and how we interact with it. We can perceive what we look at, but it does not truly become ours. Passes by. It is simply a mechanical action that brings us continuous information. But when we felt something in this incoming information that resonated with us, that interested us, and we're rethinking it, that's when we really saw that "something". We saw, separate it from the flow, took and enriched it with our own experience. We get a vision of it.

Perception

Looking at Van Gogh's "Starry Night", I see what he saw, or rather, how he saw it. I am trying to understand why his works are different from the works of other masters of that time? What exactly formed his inner universe? What life events of the author influenced it? Does it resonate with me?

I continue to look at the composition and think slowly – am I seeing exactly what the author sees? There is one more layer in this chain – the interpretation of the viewer. Each of us interprets this composition in our own way. Someone thinks about the shape of oil smears, someone tries to understand why the composition is so twisted. There are also people who succinctly evaluate a painting with a confident expression: "Daub". And that's a vision too. The vision is present both in the computer and in artificial intelligence as well.

Worlds

So what exactly is this difference in perception? It may seem that we all live in the same world, although in reality we are only in contact with it, some more and some less. Instead, each of us has our own world. Each person is a whole separate universe. We simply agreed among ourselves to call things by certain names for convenience and to give them a meaning that everyone could understand. And on the other hand, it is a limitation, and sometimes we break through it to see something more in ordinary things than we have all agreed to see. Let's take a pencil. For most, it is a tool for taking notes or drawing, for a child it is a rattle or part of a plasticine installation, and for a gardener it is an excellent holemaker for small seeds. And when you call a pencil a holemaker, it will definitely freak someone out. It's like I don't really know that it's called a pencil.

Another example is social agreements regarding the work schedule. They say that the working day should last from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This schedule makes sense when performing mechanical work, in which you can perform a certain number of actions per hour. But what about creative work? You can spend a whole day without results. And you can find a great idea in 5 minutes. Therefore, the work schedule agreements in this case should not be permanent, but we continue to stick to them. Because we agreed! In this statement, "we" is society, not "you" and not "me", so you and I can rethink and agree on what will work best for us. We can stop Looking at the norm and finally See a better solution. And the most terrible thing is that many people cannot even explain to themselves why they cannot refuse it.

That's how people hold fast to these common agreements, so that no one thinks that they are abnormal. Norma, here it is, this word. Norm, fashion, standards, customs, etiquette. We jointly agree to play in this theater with several billion actors, and we have probably already achieved a high level of professionalism. And when someone breaks out of the script, he is considered either a genius or abnormal.

When you deeply immerse yourself in your universe and have less contact with the outside world, people consider it a deviation from that norm. But personally, another perspective scares me more, when a person does not develop his inner universe, does not look into it. This is a real problem. A person then becomes empty inside.

Empty people are not capable of rethinking something in what they do, or putting a part of themselves into their work, because there is no "self", but only the norm and the program that society has prepared for us. Many people really want to live according to this program, consciously or unconsciously, because it's easier, safer. Take it and use it. Dress the same, have the same set of things, do what others do, talk the same. To have an apartment, a car, to work as a director, to have the respect of neighbors and colleagues, to fit into society, to be afraid to say something wrong. This scenario makes us the same robots. Robots with the same set of skills, with the same vision of the world.

It's easy to get on this path if you don't listen to yourself – to what you really want. And if you are already standing on it, it is difficult to get off, because those norms are deeply embedded in us. Now I remember how I switched from russian to Ukrainian, while no one around me spoke Ukrainian. Difficult, but possible. Usually there should be a good reason for this, something should shake us so that we think about it – are we in control of our life or are we swimming slowly? Despite the daily rush, it is worth finding time, stopping and thinking about everything that happens to us and where we are going, because if you don't think about it consciously, others will think for you. And then it will be as they need, not you.

Process

Our brain is a very complex thing. This is both memory and methods that fill it with data, sort, search, and release that data. And also methods that find connections between those data. And finally, there is what we call imagination, and that is the most mysterious thing. Just remember the dream in which you are walking through a non-existent city that you have never been to. It is a synthesis that creates something new, non-existent, from a pile of our memories. It is a part of creative process. I will try to break down the components of this process as I see them.

Filling

"Nothing is taken from nowhere", eh? There must be an internal collection of elements for ideas to be synthesized from. This is our memory, our library. It contains not only knowledge, but also everything that we fill ourselves with continuously. And the richer the quality of our inner world, the wider the possibilities of synthesis of its elements. Throughout life, we collect facts, memories, emotions, experiences, etc. in our library. Accordingly, when we create something, we are guided by this library, we take fragments from it and synthesize them in a certain way.

But we fill it with not just anything, but only with what we consider or feel necessary. By what resonated with us, because if it resonated, then our inner universe needs it. Save it.

Synthesis

I constantly return to the idea that creativity is synthesis. This approach may seem somewhat mechanical, and if everything were so simple, then creating artificial intelligence would not be such a difficult task. Indeed, synthesis is only a base, there are also other components in this process, and different elements can be synthesized in different ways. However, in my opinion, we somewhat romanticize the creative process, and no matter how cool it is, behind everything is synthesis and varying degrees of skill in using it.

I just thought, what knowledge do I use in my work when designing fonts, what parts of them work together? Let's analyze it. Classical musical education – plays the biggest role. From there is a sense of rhythm, which is important in typography, and accents and pauses, which are also present here and there, and a sense of harmony. Design education and practice – this knowledge gives a good understanding of how typefaces work and interact with other design elements. Because it is very important to know how the result of your work is used by the user. Programming – the impact is also considerable, because a systematic approach in the development of fonts is necessary, and from time to time I have to write scripts and automations to reduce the number of repetitive actions. The experience of playing in a metal band - hence the energy and lack of fear of disregarding the rules. But all these are, let's say, big blocks that I get from the library, but there are a lot of others that also influence my work – these are travel, cinema, communication, weather, etc.

Many will agree with me that books are usually more interesting than their film adaptations. Imagining what is written on the pages of the book, we create our own movie, and it will be different for each reader, depending on the baggage of knowledge and memories that we put together in visual images while reading. Reading is like a training ground for synthesis.

Analysis

Synthesis needs drivers. It's like a huge library that's impossible to navigate without a catalog or librarian. Even with a significant baggage of various memories, emotions and knowledge, we do not necessarily use all of them. Various separate knowledge can be useful if you find connections between them, and for these neural connections to work, drivers are needed.

One of the drivers of synthesis is analysis. Let's take a car engine. Looking at it, we try to figure out how it works. We remember that we have already heard the word piston, and we know for sure that oil lubricates something there. And fragments of knowledge from chemistry appear, because something mixes and explodes there – fuel and oxygen. And, finally, knowledge of physics, because those explosions make the piston move. And there is also the sound "dir-dir-dirrrr" – this is an auditory memory. We synthesize all that knowledge to reach this understanding.

Curiosity

Another driver is interest, which pushes us to analyze. In order for the analysis process to take place, we must want it, be interested. Or don't be interested – the engine works and that's okay. Curiosity about everything around is perfectly developed in children, and it is not surprising, because children see everything for the first time. Like a what will happen if I stick my tongue to a cold pipe in winter, huh?

So why does interest in things stop in adults? Do we already know everything? Growing up, we explore the world, first the room, then the yard in front of the house, then the surrounding area, school, city, country. Great, we managed, now we know everything for sure, turn off curiosity. But one day we go on a journey to another country and the process continues. And then we start playing sports or get into a new company of friends. And there are also books, movies, video games. This opens up new worlds that need to be explored. All of this expands our internal library, providing more material for synthesis, and in turn shaping our own vision of the world.

Thinking

If the artist used only synthesis, he would not bring anything new to this world with his creativity. And damn it, the world is full of such synthesizers, you look at their work and see only what they were inspired by, but there is nothing of their own. The deeper the author passes it through himself, the more interesting the work is. When he not only synthesizes, but also analyzes what worries him – in everyday life, society, nature, or elsewhere. You pass it through yourself, and it is no longer just a common "something", it is your "something". And here are such problems and ideas that worry you and are understood by you, and then reflected and imprinted in your work, filling it already with your vision.

One's own opinion and one's own vision appear with the development of critical thinking, and it, like muscles, needs training, time, even overcoming oneself. Let's start at least with a simple one – an analysis of the movie we watch. After watching or on an evening walk, it is worth discussing with someone what we saw in the film, why the characters acted in one way or another, how different events are connected, and what we would do if we were in those circumstances. Film critics rate and review movies, but that's their opinion of the movie, not yours. So what exactly do you think of that movie? This is what is important.

Endurance

The last phase, which is perhaps the most important, is the aging of the idea. We live with this idea for a certain time, pass our day through it, and it will take on a quality worth to imprint.

When working with a creative concept, the brain engages two different level processes – the conscious, high-level one that occurs directly when we focus on the thinking process, and the subconscious one, which continues at a lower level even when we shift our focus to something else, even during sleep. This subconscious process also takes into account the new input information continuously coming in through the senses. But now this incoming information passes through the prism of our concept, and as soon as the points of their intersection occur, the process from the subconscious returns to the conscious. We call this insight or enlightenment, during which our vision acquires a new quality – endurance.

This subconscious phase is extremely important. It uses a change in the way of thinking, which is different from direct focus. That is why a change in the environment, such as a walk in nature or a trip, or even reading books, has a positive effect. We stop synthesizing fragments of information roughly, head-on, which is similar to choosing a password letter by letter. Instead, we give the subconscious the opportunity to move away from classical logic and engage other, more flexible mechanisms that reject any unattractive ramifications of the script, saving time and energy.

Imprint

The creation of the author is an imprint of his thinking, internal process, experiences at the time of creation, a reflection of his worldview. A thought that resonates with the one who contemplates it. A vision fixed in time and space.