Last week on Monday, a bunch of design geeks, uber math nerds and a snake handler got together at Stumbling Monk to celebrate what’s to be remembered as the first day of the first run of decent summer days in Seattle. We talked about what inspired us to become designers (a surprising number of “I just fell into it” confessions there), the merits of conference hopping (”a great way to keep up with people you never see while working in the same town”), and drew. Together.
As it turned out, there is a cult of folks drawing on coasters and putting them up on the web. And some people had, independent from each other, foresights to bring a) lots of pens and b) spare blank coasters (”I feel bad stealing from the bar”). So, we decided to get busy.
Here were the rules: take a blank, draw for a few minutes, and pass it on to the next person and see what happens. When you get a coaster with someone else’s work on it, add a line or two, make it interesting, and pass it on again. That’s it! Between chatting about graph theory (we have a coaster to prove that, too) and bitching about bad typography, we quietly doodled, and came up with (in my mind) quite a collection of coaster art.
In any creative collaboration as this, in my opinion, there are a couple of essential conditions for it to be successful:
1. A sense of safety to explore, experiment and express. People were very laid back, and there was general sense of “this is just play, whatever goes.” No one was being precious with their art or overtly uncomfortable putting their line art forward. Good Belgian beer didn’t hurt there, either.
2. Deliberate de-emphasis of purpose and end results. We aren’t out to “get somewhere” when we doodle, and after all, it’s just coasters. In other words, it’s not about the results; rather, it’s an exercise of creative process. To me, this meant being aware of distracting thoughts such as “how do I make this ART?” and “I want to impress these guys.” I could then focus on what’s naturally flowing out of myself and from each other.
3. The participants being good observers/listeners. It’s like jazz improvisation or improv comedy; you need to listen before you add your line. A good designer is a good listener above all else, and everyone present displayed a great deal of patient “listening” there, I think.
Good stuff. I look forward to seeing you all again next month!
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