3.1 Creative process

What does a creative process look like?

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Let’s begin by considering the creative process as a concept. What comes to your mind?

The imagery and narratives on TV conjure up a completely subjective, nebulous series of wayward steps exclusively involving gifted creatives. This is a very romantic way to think of the creative process, as something only bestowed to the ‘innately creative’.

The reality is that everyone is creative. That means we can all learn how to pursue the creative process successfully.

Combining the words ‘creative’ and ‘process’ might seem contradictory at first. Creativity is often associated with spontaneity and the spark of a new idea, while a process is a structured and step-by-step approach. But any creative outcome—a product, service, design or work of art—emerges from a creative process. And even beyond just outcomes, creative processes are used and researched in many fields and across numerous disciplines. It’s important to add that the creative process manifests in different ways and on different timelines for each person.

The author of Change by Design, designer Tim Brown, describes the creative process as nonlinear. He writes about the design thinking process, which is one example of creative processes:

‘Although I would love to provide a simple, easy-to-follow recipe that would ensure that every project ends as successfully as this one, the nature of design thinking makes that impossible…

…There are useful starting points and helpful landmarks along the way, but the continuum of innovation is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. The reason for the iterative, nonlinear nature of the journey is not that design thinkers are disorganized or undisciplined, but that design thinking is fundamentally an exploratory process; done right, it will invariably make unexpected discoveries along the way, and it would be foolish not to find out where they lead.’

Brown does mention ‘useful starting points and helpful landmarks’: there are some overall steps in the creative process, even if it doesn’t always follow a clean, sequential path. We will turn to them next.

The classic process

Don’t forget incubation!

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Let’s explore a classic description of the creative process that was proposed almost 100 years ago and still serves as the basis for most creativity research today. Graham Wallas (1926) outlined the creative process in a four-stage model. According to him, engaging in creative idea generation entails preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.

The preparation stage involves gathering information about the problem and its domain, as well as the intended user or audience and other relevant aspects. This is a time for completely immersing oneself in the topic, studying, making observations, and exploring the field. The goal is to investigate thoroughly and to search for material to inspire idea generation later.

After preparation comes the incubation stage, in which the focus shifts away from actively thinking about the project or problem. This might sound counterintuitive, but the point is to allow the unconscious mind to make connections while you engage in other tasks and activities. It’s a way of using time as a productive factor. For example, some people use this time for exercise or non-work-related activities. The incubation stage is a simple and powerful technique that is worthwhile in many kinds of projects but is too often overlooked.

After giving the unconscious mind a chance to work on the issues, it’s time to actively pursue creative solutions again. Next comes the illumination stage, which is about generating ideas. At this point, you may make new connections and have revelations. This stage is often described as when the ‘aha’ moments occur. All the information you’ve collected and reflected on comes together into a solution. Because you’re actively thinking about the project, ideas might appear when you least expect them.

The last stage—the verification stage—involves prototyping, testing, and refining the ideas generated during the illumination phase. While earlier stages focused on coming up with new ideas, the verification stage emphasizes implementation, feasibility and, depending on the project, technical details. At this point, you sharpen, evaluate and refine your idea, and then you actualize it and realize the outcome.

What does this model look like in practice? To use a hypothetical example, let’s say that a client asked a graphic designer to design a logo for their new company, which is developing a vegan alternative to meat.

After agreeing on the project details, our designer begins preparing for the project by immersing herself in the vegan food environment. First, she studies the brand that hired her in more detail, looking at their overall values and attributes, and the details of their operations. She then visits supermarkets to photograph other vegan products. Her goal is to understand what kind of visual elements are typically used for marketing vegan products. She also looks online to get any idea of how other companies in the field use colors, typefaces and symbols for their products and logos.

After completing her research, the designer decides to start the incubation period by taking a break from the project. She goes for a run as a way of letting her unconscious brain make connections after seeing so many images of products and logos in the vegan industry. After the run, she decides to watch a movie. The movie has some beautiful scenes in a forest. The visuals in the movie spark her interest, and she thinks such aesthetics could be incorporated into her vegan food project.

Returning to the project after the incubation stage, she looks at the photos taken during the preparation phase. The images trigger ideas about which visual elements could effectively represent a vegan product. She starts sketching symbols and testing various typeface combinations on her computer to generate logo ideas for the vegan food company. After hours of experimentation, she thinks some of the sketches might resonate well with the company’s values and attributes.

The ideas generated in the illumination stage are now moved to the final stage, where the designer begins testing her ideas in practice to see how they work. First, she refines her initial sketches and tests them with the company’s existing color schemes and typefaces. She also creates packaging and website mock-ups to see how the logo ideas work in different physical and digital environments. To ensure the logo ideas work well in different sizes, she also prints them out in different formats. Throughout this stage, she edits and fine-tunes her logo ideas. Finally, she identifies the best options and creates a presentation to showcase the potential new logos to the client.

Other views on the creative process

What other theories are there about the creative process?

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Theories about the creative process have continued to be developed since the Wallas model, though it remains a popular and resonant idea—despite strong challenges to some of its aspects.

Some accounts have stressed that a closer reading of Wallas’ ideas indicates that there are five stages of the creative process. Propositions for a fifth stage include an intimation stage, which could take place just prior to the illumination stage (Abraham, 2018). Furthermore, an evaluation stage has been suggested prior to the verification stage. During the proposed evaluation stage, you would consider the validity of your idea and weigh it against alternatives. This would also be a time of reflection, when you look back at your initial concept or problem to see if your solution aligns with your initial vision. For example, business professionals might do market research to test the viability of an idea. During this phase, you might go back to the drawing board or you might forge on, confident in what you’ve come up with.

One alternative idea to Wallas’ model is called the Geneplore model, short for ‘generate and explore’ (Finke et al., 1996; Ward et al., 1995). The Geneplore model is one of the dominant frameworks for thinking about the creative process (Abraham, 2018). It’s a dual-process model of creativity in which two phases are repeated one after the other.

The first phase is known as the generative phase, during which pre-inventive or internal precursor structures are produced. In other words, this phase is all about ideation and active learning. These pre-inventive ideas can be generated either in an open-ended exploratory manner or triggered by goal-directed inquiry. This is followed by an explorative phase, where the generated structures are evaluated in terms of their usefulness and feasibility. The generate-and-explore cycle repeats until a satisfactory solution is reached. To return to the graphic designer example, even though her work progressed in clear steps, it also had cyclical elements. While she worked, she also went back and tuned her ideas based on what worked and what didn’t.

Regardless of which theory of the creative process you use, being able to consciously engage in a creative process will benefit you in many areas of life. You can grow to understand, trust, and appreciate your inner self when you devote time and energy to developing these thoughts and skills. The creative process is an experimental and playful journey!

Radically creative process

What could a radically creative process look like?

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At Aalto University, a radically creative process is considered to be a novel, open-ended, uncertain and iterative way of working. Such a process can be discontinuous and provide results akin to a ‘eureka’ moment, and thus these processes and outcomes are difficult to plan and anticipate. There is an uncontrollable element in radical creativity that requires the right conditions for it to be catalyzed by serendipitous encounters and combinations of knowledge (Björklund et al., 2022).

What does this mean in practice? As we learned in sub-chapter 1.1, Creativity and radical creativity, creativity refers to something that is simultaneously novel and useful, and radical creativity is paradigm-changing creativity. In other words, a radically creative process is a process that deliberately engages in something uncertain or unusual to generate novel and useful ideas or results.

From the process standpoint, this can be understood in many ways. On a more micro level, this could mean using an existing process model, like the Wallas model, but approaching the research, ideating, experimentation and idea realization in a consciously radical way instead of with a more incremental mindset. Returning to the graphic designer example, she could use or combine unusual methods and tools in her idea generation and sketching during the illumination stage. What if she sketched with clay instead of drawing? Could a three-dimensional form, created by hand, spark novel ideas? Or even earlier in the process, during the preparation stage, what if she studied the brand’s attributes by creative writing, combining her practical knowledge with free association?

On a more macro level, if the method suits the project, a radically creative process could mean consciously tackling tasks and cases in a unusual or out-of-order way. For example, the graphic designer could start her process by first freely ideating logos and then comparing her ideas to what everyone else is doing, to see if she can come up with something unusual that suits the vegan brand but stands out from the crowd. She would be deliberately engaging uncertainty that has the possibility to produce results that might not come to her if she approached the design process more incrementally.

A radically creative process is highly dependent on your field and what you want to achieve. Even though there are common and typical elements to the creative process, in practice the nitty-gritty of everyone’s process is subjective and unique. You can develop your own process by paying attention to what works for you and what kind of approaches yield good results. What matters the most is understanding how your own typical process works and experimenting with it.

All in all, a conscious creative process will help you come up with new ideas for approaching a problem and may be a major part of exercising your imagination. Being creative with your process can give you fresh and inventive ways of dealing with difficult situations and solving problems.

References

Abraham, Anna. 2018. The Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge Univerity Press.

Finke, R. A., Ward, T. B. & Smith, S. M. 1996. Creative cognition: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Björklund, Tua, Eriksson, Vikki, Feng, Xiaoqi, Kirjavainen, Senni, Klenner, Nico, Kuukka, Anna and van der Marel, Floris. 2022. Toward Radical Creativity.

https://www.aalto.fi/sites/g/files/flghsv161/files/2022-11/Aalto%20University%20Toward%20Radical%20Creativity%20REPORT%20October%202022.pdf

Brown, Tim. 2019. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and

Inspires Innovation. Harper Business.

Hanna-Kaisa Korolainen. 2022. ‘Inspiration is not an uncontrollable force, but an active part of the creative process’. Available at https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/hanna-kaisa-korolainen-inspiration-is-not-an-uncontrollable-force-but-an-active-part-of-the

Wallas, Graham. 1926. The Art of Thought. Turnbridge Wells: Solsis Press.

Ward, T. B., Finke, R. A. & Smith, S. M. 1995. Creativity and the mind: Discovering the genius within. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.