A Metaphor for Creativity: 5 Shapes, 3520 Artworks

Why ideas are like pieces of leather and what sneakers have to do with your capacity for creativity.

We believe creativity is all about innovative ways of combining the existing ideas, skills and pieces of inspiration that live in your mental pool of resources. (And we make it our mission to continuously fill that mental pool of yours with fascinating bits of diverse and eclectic brilliance.)

Which is why we love the concept behind Hayworth Mid II, the latest line of limited-edition sneakers by Y-3, in collaboration with graffiti artist Momo.

The idea is brilliantly simple — Momo cut five double-sided shapes, combinable into 3520 artworks by changing up their layered order on a nail. (Well, technically, there are 3840 possible combinations, but 320 of them become redundant when the ring, the smallest shape, becomes obscured by one of the larger shapes.)

Y-3 only produced 350 pairs of sneakers, so each was technically unique, but this sort of semi-customization raises an interesting question: Can we really automatize customization while still maintaining its psychological and conceptual appeal?

In a way, ideas are like these shape combinations — except only a fraction of the combinations are truly great ideas. Which is why it’s so important to build a vast pool of mental “shapes” — thoughts and memories and pieces of inspiration — combinable in near-infinite ways into new ideas, thus maximizing the drops of brilliance within that sea of possibility. And there’s no better way to do that than by growing indiscriminate curiosity about the eclectic interestingness of culture.

Psst, we’ve launched a fancy weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays, offers the week’s articles, and features five more tasty bites of web-wide interestingness. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Creativity for Sustainability: Glove Love

All gloves are off in the war on climate change, or what models have to do with natural history.

We love Green Thing. And now, their latest project is giving us all the more reason to. Launching at London Fashion Week this week, the GloveLove project reunites the world’s lost single gloves in a charmingly clever promotion for GT’s anti-waste initiative, All-Consuming — the art of wasting nothing and using everything.

Each newly paired set is washed, repaired and re-packaged by hand with recycled nametags and labels that explain the stories behind each glove.

Glove Love is brilliant, romantic, original, funny and green.” ~ Emma Thompson

The effort is backed by socially-conscious celebs like Eva Green, Lauren Budd and Emma Thompson, and has already received hundreds of glove donations from both everyday folks and the lost-and-founds of organizations like Transport for London and Britain’s Natural History Museum.

GloveLove is a lovely illustration of the idea that creativity is a powerful tool for propelling sustainability — and one more inspired way for Green Thing to put their money where their mouth is in backing their “Creativity vs. Climate Change” mantra.

Give a glove to contribute to this wonderful project, and the good folks at GT will even let you know when your glove has been paired up and found its glovelover soulmate. Or, get yourself a brilliantly, colorfully mis-matched pair with character and a story for the non-price of £5.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Art Meets Science: They Might Be Giants’ Creative Education

What paleontology has to do with stop-motion animation and kindergartners.

They Might Be Giants are among the most iconic and revolutionary alt-rock bands of our time. They’ve founded one of the first artist-owned online music stores, stunned critics with an unorthodox children’s project, performed at TED, and consistently challenged the conventions of the music industry. Oh, and they’ve won a few Grammys along the way.

This month, TMBG have released the latest installment in their critically acclaimed Here Comes children’s series. The Here Comes Science 2-disc CD/DVD album is a bundle of creativity and entertainment, tied with a ribbon of education. Although aimed at the K-5 set, the playful lyrics and brilliantly animated videos are an absolute treat for musicologists and design junkies alike — we can attest.

From the charming illustration in this Amazon-exclusive video, to the wonderful paper-cutout stop-motion animation in Electric Car, to the infographic ode to the periodic table in Meet The Elements, the album is a testament to the transformational power of a fresh approach to a stale subject.

What makes us particularly enamored with this project is that it addresses of the sore need for creativity in education, the lack of which is often a dealbreaker in kids’ engagement in the learning process. As Sir Ken Robinson so bluntly yet fairly pointed out in his TED talk, today’s schools may well be killing creativity.

Check out Here Comes Science for 19 unexpected takes on paleontology, evolution, astronomy, photosynthesis, anatomy and other delightfully geeky curiosities that you probably slept through in school.

Donating = Loving

Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:

♥ $7 / month♥ $3 / month♥ $10 / month♥ $25 / month

(If you don’t have a PayPal account, no need to sign up for one – you can just use any credit or debit card.)

You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Film Spotlight: Lemonade

Creativity, joblessness, and going from making a living to making a life.

UPDATE: Lemonade is now out on DVD — we highly recommend it.

Many see a job in the “creative industry” — design, advertising, production, you name it — as implicit validation of their inherent creativity. But what happens when the “industry” boots you and forces you do rely on your actual, raw, make-it-or-break it creativity?

Lemonade, a new film about the 70,000+ advertising professionals who have lost their jobs in “The Great Recession” so far, explores what happens when people who once made a living as “creatives” in advertising are forced to make a life creatively.

For us, the film strikes particularly close to home. Had we not exited the ad industry — albeit, in this case, voluntarily, Brain Pickings would’ve never happened. Nor would’ve a host of other creative projects and various exciting opportunities.

Lemonade, from writer Erik Proulx and director Marc Colucci, comes as a testament to the power of a creative mind over a creative job title.

via the wonderful Jawbone.TV

We’ve got a weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays, offers the week’s articles, and features five more tasty bites of web-wide interestingness. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.