Follow these 5 steps to a more creative mind

This article explains how all outstanding ideas go through a similar creative process.Understanding this is key, because one of the most useful skills you can have is the ability to think creatively. Innovative solutions, lateral thinking, and creative ideas can help you in almost any situation you encounter at work or in life.

These five steps can help anyone be more creative. That's not to say that being creative is easy. It takes courage and a lot of practice to discover your creative genius. This five-step method, on the other hand, should help demystify the creative process and reveal the path to more original thinking.

To solve a problem, you'll need to think beyond the box.

Newspapers and printing presses in the 1870s faced a particularly specialized and expensive dilemma. Photography was a novel and exciting medium at the time.Readers asked for more images, but no one knew how to create images quickly and cheaply. For example, in the 1870s, if a newspaper wanted to print an image, it had to hire an engraver to hand-engrave a replica of the photo onto a steel plate. These plates were used to print the image on the page, but often broke after just a few uses. You can imagine how time-consuming and expensive the photo etching process was.

Frederic Eugene Ives is the person who has found a solution to this challenge. By the end of his career, he had accumulated more than 70 patents in the field of photography, making him a pioneer in the discipline. His story of creativity and innovation, which I now tell you about, is a good example of the five critical steps in the creative process.

An overview of understanding.

Ives began his career as a printer's apprentice in Ithaca, New York. He began overseeing the photo lab at nearby Cornell University after two years of learning the ins and outs of the printing process. For the rest of the decade, he familiarized himself with cameras, printers, and optics, while experimenting with new photographic approaches.

"I explored the theme of the halftone process when I used my photostereotyping process in Ithaca," said Ives."I went to bed one night, perplexed about the problem, and when I awoke the next morning, the technique was fully established.fully developed and the equipment in operation, presumably projected on the ceiling."

In 1881, Ives patented his printing method after quickly turning his concept into reality. He spent the rest of the decade perfecting his craft. By 1885 he had invented a more efficient method that produced even better results. The Ives process, as it became known, reduced the cost of printing photographs by 15 times and became the industry standard for the next 80 years.

To divide a photo into a series of tiny dots, Frederic Eugene Ives' printing process used a technology called "halftone printing." When viewed from a normal distance, the image appears to be a collection of dots, but when viewed up close, the dots merge into an image with varying degrees of gray.

The creative process in 5 steps.

A technique for generating ideas, written by James Webb Young, an advertising executive, was published in 1940. In this tutorial, he provided a simple but significant commentary on generating creative ideas.

According to Young, new ideas arise when existing aspects are combined in new ways. In other words, creative thinking is not about creating something new from scratch; it's about taking what already exists and bringing it together in a way that has never been done before. More importantly, your ability to identify the links between concepts is essential to creating new combinations. You have done something creative when you can make a new connection between two old ideas.

The concept in action.

Frederic Eugene Ives' creative process is a wonderful example of these five processes in action. Ives began to collect new information. He spent two years as a printer's apprentice before being in charge of Cornell University's photo lab for four years. These encounters provided him with rich material for drawing and developing connections between photography and print. Second, Ives began mentally reviewing everything he was learning. By 1878 Ives had spent most of his time experimenting with new methods. He always played the violin and experimented with new ways of joining concepts.

Third, Ives walked away from the problem. He fell asleep for a few hours before having a flash of clarity on the matter. It is also possible to leave creative problems for a longer period of time. You need to do something that fascinates you and keeps you out of trouble no matter how long you run away. Fourth, the concept of him returned to him. Ives woke up with the answer to his problem in front of him. (Personally, I often have creative ideas while I go to sleep; if I tell my brain to stop working that day, the solution comes quickly).

Ultimately, Ives spent years revising his concept. He improved so many features of the technique that he had to apply for a second patent. This is a crucial aspect that is sometimes missed.. It's easy to fall in love with the first iteration of his concept, but great ideas develop over time.