When I decided to take my place at Lancaster University it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I know many people find it hard to decide what to major in and take as your degree, because it is a decision that will impact on your life.  However, I soon realized that I wanted to take Design; as I wanted to work in a creative industry.  I wanted the commercial side of it, where I could explore areas of product design, graphic design, advertising and many more areas that I had not even thought of yet.  This was important to me, I wanted to be challenged, and pushed into directions I did not even know existed. Fortunately, in my first week at Lancaster this soon became very apparent that I had made the right decision.

New ways of thinking

‘Good and Bad Ideas’ was the title of a Design workshop, it was one of the first that we had. The idea behind it was to make you look at Idea Generation in a new light.

This was fascinating, as most people take coming up with ideas for granted, thinking it’s easy and sticking to their methods of generation. However, we explore new techniques which takes you beyond the initial thought. One of the most creative yet challenging tasks was coming up with the worst ideas you could think of. It’s important to look at bad ideas, as identifying problems is as important as solving them.

We worked in groups of five in the workshop, so ideas were being generated fast. It was fun!  The things people think of when doing the opposite to normal is amazing, gone are the restrictions that you imply when using other techniques, as feasibility and such go out of the window.

Why did we do this?

You may be thinking what is the point of this?  Well really it’s to turn the worst idea that was thought of into the best idea. Ambitious, yes, and we were all a little perplexed at how this happened and how in the world we were meant to do this, but bit by bit you strip the idea down to reach the fundamentals. Surprisingly, it quickly becomes an amazing idea that you would not have considered before. It was also amazing to see how everyone in the group was completely involved.

Creativity existed in abundance, something that was so inspiring to be around. Now I am not saying it was easy because it was not. But it gives you a feel of what working to a deadline and client brief feels like, in a group of people that don’t know each other, then having to create a well thought out idea. I came out of this workshop happy knowing that I made the right choice and that I was so excited to start on the next tasks. But not only that, before this, I would never have looked at a brief that asked for the best idea and approached it by starting with the worst. It gave me a new mindset of sorts, freeing me from the restrictions on my creativity that I had previously placed there.