Stefan Bucher keeps it real in an artist’s call to arms

One of the outstanding presentations at the AIGA San Deigo’s Design Conference was today’s Thinkshop by Stefan Bucher: Braving the Darkness and Vanquishing the White Page — a cheat sheet on surviving life in the creative field.

Originally from Germany, print designer Stefan Bucher heads the firm 344 Design in southern California. It was refreshing to see someone share their honor to be speaking at the conference and come so well-prepared. His presentation was loaded with great visuals, including video snippets to illustrate situations and an opening montage of an illustration drawn just for the event. He prepared hand-drawn and custom-designed worksheets for the audience to explore their dreams, fears, stresses and create plans of forward movement. When some of the fonts in his slides displayed corrupted, he took it in stride and kept a light-hearted tone with witty jokes about the nonsense words.

Stefan spoke from recent experience on creative overload and being stretched to the limits of his capabilities. “The notion that pain equals sincerity is bullshit,” he said. Depression is not a requirement for creativity. We have all experienced pain, and simply need to remember and access that pain, not work immersed it.

A distilled version of Stefan Bucher’s tips for continued creative success:

Break your patterns.
Recognize your patterns, then break them. Be sure to notice year-long cyclical patterns.

Take time to play.
Set up a time to have relax and have fun doing something you like. (Maybe it’s visiting an art gallery, riding your bicycle, rock-climbing, playing the harmonica, doing a collage…) The idea is not to make this time goal-oriented by trying to accomplish a task, it’s just a time to enjoy.

Randomize.
Keep your brain from following the same easy ways to solve design or creative challenges by mixing it up. For visual inspiration, browse through magazines and newspapers, pull some clippings and then put them next to your work space.

Ask endless questions.
Ask your clients questions, lots of questions. Be genuinely curious. Find out what inspires your clients, their favorite magazines, what they hope their next big break is, and why, why, why? And ask yourself these questions too.

Embrace emergent behavior.
If you’re working on a design and it seems to start to take on a life of it’s own, that’s ok, let it!

Balance yourself physically and creatively.
The best way to achieve ongoing creative success is by taking care of yourself both physically and creatively. Make sure you nurture yourself with enough sleep, good food, new experiences and remember to set aside time to have fun!

Links

Stefan Bucher’s Studio: 344 Design >
AIGA San Diego’s Y Design Conference >