Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

I've been looking at and thinking about design education recently so when I came across a piece on TED about creativity within education I wanted to see more. I'm glad I made time for this witty and informative video and I hope you do too.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining but powerful argument that the way we educate our children out of creative arts is misguided and sometimes, as he points out in his case study of Gillian Lynne could have been a terribly wasteful mistake.

His follow-up talk about an education 'climate crisis' and the real challenge of transforming education from a 19th century industrial model into a 21st century process based on different principles.

Creating creativity

Radio 4 show tonight explores whether scientific research can be creative.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kvr9l

I was struck with Anne Miller speaking about her experience of creating products in a scientific arena. She said when she first started creating ideas and products she thought there must have been something wrong with her ideas as so many scientists were creating barriers to her theses.

Even when creating graphic design I come across barriers to great ideas. I'm not being precious here, I do realise that design is led by marketing and business and as such responds to criteria set out by the client. To a certain degree the 'blue sky' research spoken about in the radio show doesn't operate to criteria, but some clients just don't get the idea of inputting 'research' into designs. I've spoken to clients who have come to me wanting cutting edge contemporary designs and ideas but really they already have preconceived ideas about what they themselves desire. This is somewhat dangerous. In this sort of project we usually end up pandering to the client's personal desires. The client has confused business and marketing criteria with their own taste. Very often I'm asked to try it in orange "because the wife wants to see it like that". On the other hand these guys are paying for it but it must be designer's responsibility to check the client and make sure they realise that this deviates from the design specification laid out initially which responds accurately to the target marketing.

Shall we try it in pink?