Creativity and Bugging the Customer

[preprius]

I found that I like the creativity of the scrollsaw so much that I suggest to customers ideas they did not think about.  So the process finalizing the artwork takes longer than the cuts. 

My last post was for a knife sheath. The cutout took 6 min.  The  discussions with customer took 12 hours.  Via texts and links.  But my nudges to ideas was vague so they could think about topics meaningful for them.   They chose an outline of a sword that is in a computer game. After I suggested computer game icons. 

I was not satisfied with creativity. I could have done more techniques. But thet were happy with the outcome. 

My cowboy hats are the same way. I have to get customers to think on artwork on top of the hats.  

Bugging customers is just part of the creativity process. 

Form, fit, function and fiction is needed when being creative with a useable product.   The fictional part is the story you suggest to the customer.   I have my creative expectations and they have to think about what their wants are.  Sometimes making up stuff to guide the customers in to thinking where it will go how will it be used. 

Lessons learned.

A) Time allocations for customer bugging.  12hours before final design in my case. 

B) Keep engaging new open ended questions. 

C) Maybe limit the questions to 4 iteractions.   I think after 4 or 5, both me and the customer has agreed on way less of a cool outcome. 

In my knife sheath, the customer settled on end design in 3 iteractions.  Good decent outcome.

 netflix had a series called.. Abstract the Art of (illustration, Typeset (signage and posters) and 5 others topics) .  My favorite is illustration, then the poster signage. 

One of those episodes posters and signage discussed the customer interactions.  

 

Scrollsaws can be so creative. 

 Have fun. 

Me. Mark Eason

Edited April 15 by preprius