🎨 Are you a creative worker or striving to be one?
This week’s Monday Mavens reads are especially curated for you.
With technology constantly upgrading itself, knowledge is no longer a privilege but rather the norm. In the words of Jurgen Appelo—a pioneer in creative management, the 21st century has created less need to know things and more need to make things.
This is where creative workers come in. Those who invest their time in experimentation and practice, earning income from creative, cultural, or artistic-based pursuits whether independently or via an employer.
Design thinking, pillar of the economy
Based on its definition, does it mean that every one who works as an employee in the 21st century is a creative worker? It all comes down to one thing—design thinking.
If your work requires you to be a good problem solver, it makes you somewhat a creative. Of course, there are levels to how much of a creative worker you can be. It depends on how much you rely on creativity in completing your daily tasks.
Stefanos Zenios, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Stanford, has previously stated that creativity is a structured, systematic way to solve problems. As seen in the design thinking framework above, creativity is at the center of every innovation, which is key to the growth of every business and company.
Read more about who count as creative workers and how you can become one here.
Moments of scrappiness, the unexplored idea bank
It seems that the world is already saturated with so many ideas that as a creative, it feels nearly impossible to come up with something novel. What we often overlook, though, is novel does not equal to completely new.
Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, has listed 16 ways we could implement to generate new ideas, some of them include:
Make a Twitter List for inspiration
20 people you admire in your niche
10 people in your target audience
5 people you can see yourself mentoring
Think out loud, literally
Record audio of yourself ranting or raving, then generate a transcript in Descript. Some prompts you can start with:
Most people get this wrong...
Right now, this is bugging me...
I wish more people knew about...
Do a “job swap” with a friend
Set up a 1-hour meeting where you trade places with a colleague with the following agenda:
20 min to assess: Read each other's websites, blogs, campaigns, etc.
20 min to critique: Ask questions, raise flags, say what you love.
20 min to ideate: Be inspired and plan your next steps.
Find more recommendations by Amanda and tweak them as you need, in her full Twitter thread here.
One for the visual learners
Earlier this year, one of the biggest design platforms in the world, Figma, held their annual global design conference called the #Config2022. Even if you’re not working in the design field, the talks from this event are worth checking out as they serve as a creativity trigger.
Ahmad Alim, Product Designer at Bukalapak, has picked out his favorite talks from #Config2022:
“Design Systems are Flawed” by José Torre, Staff Designer at Shopify
José’s talk discusses some of the common misconceptions on design system, especially ones he came across while working on Shopify Polaris.
“Designing for Smart Homes - When Internet Fails” by Bilgi Karan, UX Manager at IKEA
As a giant global retail chain originating from Sweden, IKEA is notorious for its unique store design. In this talk, Bilgi breaks down IKEA’s design principles.
“How to Show & Tell: A Recipe to Share Work Asynchronously” by Pavi Logeswaran, Designer at AUTH0
Pavi shares his tips on how to overcome a regressing situation of when we share our work asynchronously only to be ignored by the other stakeholders.
Catch more of Alim’s favorite talks from #Config2022 in his full Twitter thread here.
Feeling inspired yet?
Make sure to bookmark this week’s Monday Mavens edition so you can get back to the ~inspiring~ insights later on during the week.
Have a great second week of July, everyone.
Cheers!