Creativity and Ideas starts with curiosity
I've always been interested in more than how something looks. I'm interested in why it works. These questions have followed me throughout my career.
Why does one sequence of images create emotion while another doesn't?
How do colour, rhythm, sound and composition change the meaning of a story?
How does an audience interpret what they see?
And how can we take familiar visual languages and use them in unexpected ways?
In 2012, my Master's research investigated the construction, deconstruction and poetics of real-time narrative through Live Cinema. I explored how moving image, montage, colour, sound, performance, technology and audience work together to construct meaning and how breaking those conventions apart can lead to different ways of telling stories.
Live Cinema as a visual language.
At the centre of that research was an idea that still shapes the way I work today:
creators can use the tools of their time, combining new technologies with established creative languages to discover different ways of communicating.
More than a decade later, that research still influences the way I approach creative work.
WHAT TAUGHT ME:
NOT TO STOP AT THE FIRST IDEA.
When I receive a brief, I don't immediately ask: What should this look like?
I start with:
What are we really trying to say?
What should the audience understand or feel?
What is the story behind the message?
What references can we draw from?
What happens if we look at the problem from another perspective?
What visual language will make this particular idea meaningful?
That process allows me to explore before I execute.
My research into narrative gave me a deeper understanding of how individual creative decisions, an edit, a colour, a rhythm, a sound, a composition, a transition, a point of view, can change the way an audience experiences a message. My thesis explored precisely these relationships.
I also examined live montage as a way of constructing emotional and intellectual associations between images.
TODAY, I BRING THAT THINKING INTO A VERY DIFFERENT CONTEXT:
BRANDS
A brand is also constructing a narrative. Every campaign, film, social post, visual identity or digital experience contributes to what people see, understand, feel and remember about it.
That's where my background becomes practical.
Research and critical thinking help me move
beyond simply executing a brief.
They help me question it, interpret it, find connections and explore different creative possibilities before deciding on the strongest direction. I can draw from cinema, art, design, culture, technology and years of visual experimentation to find unexpected references and translate them into ideas that make sense for a contemporary audience.
It's not about making brand communication more complicated.
It's about making it more considered, distinctive and meaningful.
FROM RESEARCH TO
REAL-WORLD CREATIVITY
The context has changed since my Master’s. The curiosity hasn’t. I'm still exploring how stories are constructed, how visual languages evolve and how new tools can change the creative process.
Today that includes experimenting with AI and emerging technologies, but always as part of a much bigger creative practice.
Because the tool isn't where my process starts.
The question is. And asking better questions can lead to better ideas.