Why You Can't Be Creative

Have you ever sat in front of your computer screen racking your brain trying to come up with an idea?

Yeah, I’ve been there too. I read something the other day on Twitter that made a lot of sense.

Computers are great for EXECUTION, but are terrible for ideation.

If you think about it, it starts to make sense. I don’t know about you, but I have my BEST ideas when I am away from my laptop. Maybe I am doing the dishes, taking a shower, or going on a walk…a great idea will suddenly pop in my head that solves everything I was racking my brains over.

So, here is a great way to utilize this to ‘hack’ creativity (I hate the word hack).

The brain is more creative when you are not consuming. If you are trying to ideate and you’re watching a video or actively messing around in Figma, writing, etc. STOP. Take a step back and put away all distractions. This will allow your brain to roam and your brain will naturally begin to make subconscious connections.

Here are a couple ways you can allow your brain to wander:

• Do the dishes (by doing a task that doesn’t require mental bandwidth your brain begins to wander)

• Take a walk

• Take a shower (Have you ever had great ideas in the shower? Yeah, me too.)

Now, here’s the other important part: RECORD YOUR IDEAS.

You need to setup a framework for capturing ideas that works for you. You would be surprised how many ideas you have throughout the day when you make a concerted effort to begin capturing them. Here’s what works for me: I setup a quick note widget on my phone so I can easily jump in and take a quick note that I can access later.

I hope this framework helps you become more creative and collect more ideas!

Adobe acquires Figma

Wow, what an explosive way to start out this first edition of Creative Fu. On the morning of Sept 15th, design twitter went NUCLEAR. Adobe acquired Figma. I’ll be honest, my immediate reaction was, “Is this a joke? It’s not April Fool’s right?”

While Adobe has a ton of data from being the incumbent in the industry for decades at this point…I am very hesitant to be optimistic about this as someone who uses Figma daily. I am very concerned that the Figma that I love will be gone forever, swallowed by Adobe.

Competition is ALWAYS good in a marketplace. Adobe has always had a huge monopoly when it comes to design tools…then along came Figma and it threatened Adobe so much they decided to just buy them.

Adobe doesn’t have the best track record with successful acquisitions so I will wait to see what happens after it’s integrated with Adobe. So, what are our alternatives? Well, there are a handful of competitors that still exist: Illustrator Competitor: Affinity Designer

Photoshop Competitor: Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro

Indesign Competitor: Affinity Publisher

XD/Figma Competitor: Sketch and Framer

General Design: Canva (I know it’s frowned upon, but it’s still a tool)

If you know about any other great tools out there please reach out to me and I’ll feature them on the next newsletter! I’ll wrap up this section by saying, I THINK that this has immense potential to make Figma an absolute powerhouse if it can integrate with Adobe’s ecosystem seamlessly. That’s if Adobe plays it’s cards perfectly. If Adobe doesn’t then I can see it becoming integrated directly into XD. We shall see what happens!

It’s that time of year where the newest iPhone is released.

I watched this great video by Peter McKinnon:

I love his take on the cameras and it’s amazing how far cameras have come that his video looks so professional yet it is all recorded on the iPhone 14. I have to admit, his video really convinced me that I think I ‘need’ this new phone.

What are your thoughts on the new iPhone? Tag me on twitter and let’s talk about it!