DESIGN: Bauhaus books COURTESY OF Bibliothèque Kandinsky

Just found that these Bauhaus books as downloadable PDFs on this website: https://monoskop.org/Bauhaus

“The following nine PDFs are linked from the Bibliothèque Kandinsky which published them online on an unknown date (follow this link to explore the respective entries on its website). This is an important milestone in the digitisation of essential but hard-to-get art publications for the public use and we would like to express our gratitude and appreciation. <3 ! The whole set of these high-quality digital facsimiles is about 1 GB large, if anyone feels like starting a torrent to relieve bandwidth of the library let us know and we'll include your link here. (17 Aug 2014). Update: you can now download the whole set in a single ZIP file from here. Thanks to Gabriel Benderski. (29 Aug 2014)”

BOOKS: 70 year old Creativity Technique Still Relevant Today

FIVE STEPS TO YOUNG’S CREATIVITY TECHNIQUE

1. GATHER RAW MATERIAL

If we are trying to solve a problem, we need to learn everything about the challenge we are working on.  Here, Young  suggests something which sounds a lot like a principle of design thinking, where the person needs to get out of their office, and connect with people that are having the problem you are trying to find a creative solution to. In this phase we should be like curious explorers.

He also suggests that there is the lifelong job of gathering raw material for creativity by being interested and curious about many diverse hobbies and fields.  As Young says,

Every really creative person has two noticeable characteristics. First, there is no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested-from say Egyptian burial customs to Modern Art. Second, he is an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.

 This browsing of diverse information comes in handy for eventually having a critical mass of raw material to combine in new ways.   Young suggests finding some kind of system for filing and categorizing cool ideas and stuff one finds as one explores.  Now, we are lucky with all the tools in the digital realm which help us gather snippets,  quotes, pictures and interesting things we find as we browse.  We may have the idea today that we are inundated with too much information, however the upside of this is that we have lots of raw material to draw from for problem solving.  

2. DIGESTING THE RAW MENTAL MATERIAL 

This is a tricky stage, where facts, ideas and raw material are looked at from many different angles and playful combinations are explored.  The creative person is trying to see relationships between the raw material one gathered.

Here a strange element comes in. This is that facts sometimes yield up their meaning quicker when you do not scan them too directly, too literally…When creative people are in this phase, they get a reputation for being absentminded. 

In this stage, half baked ideas will arise and Young suggests jotting them down right away no matter how crazy and impractical they may seem. After working a long time at this, usually a state of hopelessness will arise where everything will feel upside down, and there will be no clear insight anywhere. Young suggests this time of creative confusion is a sign one has worked hard enough and is ready for the next step.

3. LETTING IT GO

Here, you take a break. Try not to keep thinking about the challenge you’re working on.  Even though it may seem counterintuitive to what we’ve been taught in school, Young asserts that this stage of putting the problem out of your mind is just as important as the previous two stages. Today, in the world of exploring what fosters creativity, it continues to be recognized that we need a time of letting go; doing something totally different to allow for new connections in our brain to come together.

You remember how Sherlock Holmes used to stop right in the middle of a case and drag Watson off to a concert? That was a very irritating procedure to the practical and literal minded Watson. But Conan Doyle was a creator and knew the creative process 

4. OUT OF NOWHERE THE IDEA WILL APPEAR

If you have been truly disciplined in the first three stages of the process, Young says that you will likely experience the fourth.  The fourth is that often creative solutions will arise when we least expect them and often when doing totally unrelated activities.  As Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favours only the prepared mind."

This is the way ideas come: after you have stopped straining for them, and have passed through a period of rest and relaxation from the search.

5. ENSURING AN IDEA IS RELEVANT

In this stage you have to take your new idea out into the world and see if it is truly a good one.  Young recognizes that when you do take the idea out, you usually find that it is not quite as amazing as when it first arose. At this point, disciplined critique to ensure your idea fits with the criteria of the challenge you are working on is necessary. It’s important here to share your idea with others and have them offer insight.  Young suggests that when you do ask for feedback you will find that a good idea has self-expanding qualities and can stimulate others to build on it. 

Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to criticism of the judicious.