[MUSIC] In the last video I talk about what we are going to ask you to do in this assignment. And now I'm going to show you a couple of practical tips on how to go about it. So the first thing first. As I already told you about when I talked about the summary of all the principles of design and individual composition. First try to think of idea that you want to pursue with a model that you're making. So try to think about it in terms of well I'd rather try some composition that's very vertical. Or I like to try something that's on the contrary maybe very horizontal or some diagonals or maybe I want to try something static or make something dynamic. Whatever it is, try to have a strong idea of what you want to do and then start exploring this idea but putting the big dominant elements. So, for example if we say, well I would like to explore this beautiful view, and try to sort of make an element that will frame it. So that means that probably I want to have something like this here, and then we just take one element that will hold it in place. And we put it here and we start with that. Then we say, well that's okay, but now the composition's too heavy on this side. So we need to make another element in order to try to conceive a sort of asymmetrical balance here. Then you start with big elements, and then you gradually move into more and more detail. While you do that, you always want to have in mind the hierarchy and the balance of your composition. But it's not only about thinking very rationally about the principles. The perfect thing to do is, you start with a very rational idea, what you want to do. But then you just go with the flow. You try to improvise, the same way maybe as a jazz musician improvises. And in fact, this set of exercise is very similar to improvisation where a jazz musician basically play the notes that they feel they want to play in the moment, but they keep the main structure and the harmony of the composition. So, the same way, you want to keep maybe the character of the composition, you want to keep it. These dominant elements, you want to keep the asymmetrical feeling but also you want to just irrationally go with the flow and start adding and subtracting things, maybe cutting things out and folding and see where that takes you. So first tip is to try to combine rational and irrational thought because this is what designers must often do. Right? Second tip is also the thing that I mentioned when I talk about how to summarize these principles. Second tip is start from big elements and gradually get into detail. Third tip is since we already ask you to do at least three versions of the model, try to make all three versions very different from each other, because right now you're in the divergent stage of creativity. That means you want to explore all different kind of directions that this design can take you. And so, it makes sense, if you making versions to try to really make them really different. Fourth tip would be to be fast and keep moving. Right. Again, don't try to think too much about things. Just as I've said, go with the flow, try to keep moving and just try to get this, how would I say, really quick result out. Now sometimes you feel blocked. Sometimes you feel you don't know what to do next. And the fifth tip would be if you feel a creative block, just do something silly. If you feel you don't actually know what to do, maybe just take a piece of paper. Crumple it and throw it around to see how does it look like, if some new idea comes out of it or just, I don't know. Put the baseball in there. The idea about doing something silly is you want to get in a state of mind that you become again curious about this space because remember, it's almost impossible to do creative work if you feel you have to do something. You can only be creative if you want to do something. So, in order to, again, to avoid creative blocks, just try to get yourself curious and interested in the work you are doing and doing something silly and unpredictable is always a good way to start getting out of this block. Sixth tip would be to maybe try to create these elements beforehand, before you start making compositions. You will see in the description of the assignment that we prepared you to do something called design kit, and so to just cut out elements like these, and also make a lot of these little things. And then prepare yourself so that in the moment when you start creating you don't have to think about actually cutting things out, you just compose things as if it was Lego blocks. If you get into state of mind that you feel like you're playing with these elements, there's a very good chance that you're going to be outputting some creative work really quickly. So it's a good idea to try to create some of these elements first, and then use them to do composition. And then finally, the seventh tip would be obviously you want to take into consideration the site, the elements of the site. So take a look at the scale of the site. Also the site is in a way, sort of asymmetrical. So that might influence your design. Also, you might want to at the beginning, put a couple of people over there just to get a sense of scale that you're working with. And yeah, there's also another tip that we call extra tip. And I would say, I would call it, avoid almost situations. Now almost situations is what I call when you do something that's maybe almost symmetrical but is not quite symmetrical. For example you align some things. These are almost aligned with this building but they're not quite aligned. So whatever you find yourself in an almost situations, you want to avoid that. And you decide whether you want to have these things align and then you try to really make them align. Or if you don't want them aligned, make sure that your intention is not to have them align. So anytime you find yourself in almost situation, decide whether it's going to be yes or no. And make sure that your intention is easy to recognize, otherwise every time you do a normal situation, it looks like a mistake. It is perceived as a mistake because people don't know, it is supposed to be like this or like that? So these were some creative tips, and as always, good luck and have fun. [MUSIC]
