These are the three key steps to creativity, or at least, that’s what Kirby Ferguson’s (Everything is a Remix 2010-2012) has come up with during his career.
As someone working – at some level – on the fashion & footwear trendy industry, you may relate to his vision of “creativity” when it comes to product innovation.
Ferguson’s maxim of the basic elements of creativity — Copy, Transform, and Combine — distills the process that artists, engineers, programmers, musicians, and filmmakers throughout history have repeated in order to learn their craft and eventually produce new products.
Copy: No one starts out original. We cannot create anything new until we have a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding in our line of work. Copying is how we learn.
Transform: Taking an idea and creating variations. Major advances are usually not original ideas, but the breaking point in a long history of progress by many different individuals.
Combine: The most dramatic results happen when various ideas are combined together. By connecting ideas together, creative leaps can be made.
We tried hard on the last few years to put together a comprehensive suite of applications and services aimed to help brands and boutique owners manage their production. From the designing boards to shipping logistics.
Our 3D Designing Tool, the Get Inspired platform and the Ready-to-Wear gallery are some of the main tools we developed. But the truth is, they all share the same goal. A «late motiv» that has driven our developing efforts from the creation of our company: provide our partners with the tools and opportunities to innovate on their own.
Dozens of shoe patterns, hundreds of materials, multiple configurable pieces, different shoe lasts and sole units… the potential for creativity is endless.
You can take it a step further, and even develop your own custom styles and shoe lasts, send your own materials, design your custom embroidery motifs, and so on. We want you to be truly original.
However, what does being ‘original’ mean? Does that concept still exist? Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore, and everything is a remix. Maybe we can only generate new ideas copying, transforming and combining previous ideas as Kirby points out.
What do you think? We would love to hear your feedback.