Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has been lovely and you have some fun planned for the weekend. Before we get to the weekend, however, I wanted to take a few minutes to share some ideas about organization and creativity that I’ve been thinking about this week. I have numerous projects going on at the moment so I’ve been thinking a lot about how to be organized to get everything done, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about how to partner organization with creativity and how that works in my life and work.

So I didn’t want to talk about creative organization. I think there are enough blogs out there writing about that. Instead I just wanted to share a few observations about how organization and creativity, at least for me, are partners instead of head-butting opposites. I know that there are people out there who believe that creativity has to be messy and I’d agree. But having a messy creativity process, like getting paint on the floor or ink on your wrists from all the edits on your manuscript are not the same as being unorganized. Sure, creativity is messy, just look at my kitchen table when I’m writing or my work desk when I’m creating a new tutorial or video for my classes. It’s a super-big mess, maybe one that I’ll share sometime with pictures. It’s messy, but it isn’t unorganized.

Being organized for me is a way of saving time and headspace so I can devote more energy to being creative. If my stuff is organized (and I have less of it to organize), then I don’t waste precious minutes or hours searching for what I need, be it some more fountain pen ink, my audio recorder, or a stack of notes for a video script. I’m a firm believer in putting things away, in the same place, every time. It not only keeps it organized, but then I don’t have to try to remember where I last saw something. I know where it is.

This, in turn, allows me to free up space in my head to organize thoughts and projects. Do you ever have days when it feels like the index cards or files in your brain are all hodge-podge on the floor? That each thought you have scurries away before you can link it to the next? I feel like that sometimes, but notice that I feel that way a lot less if I’ve been diligent about organizing my stuff, my time, and my projects. Then I actually have the room in my head to make connections I’d otherwise miss in the noise and I’m calm enough to get something new done. And, I like that.

One of the projects I’m currently working on is a poster session for ALA Annual. I’ll be there on Sunday, June 28th, from 2:30 to 4:00 pm in the Exhibit Hall. You can see details about the poster session here. I’d love it if you’d stop by. We can talk graphic design and libraries. It will be fun or at least hopefully not awkward. I’ll be posting more about poster design as I continue to work on them in the coming weeks.

I hope you have a wonderful spring weekend. I’ll be back soon. Allons-y!

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a lovely week and are looking forward to a lovely weekend. Also, Happy National Library Week! We’ve had a week of events here at the library, which has made for a fun (and busy) week. I enjoyed designing posters and flyers for our events so I wanted to talk a bit about creativity today as well as start talking about design. Since one of my new research areas is looking at graphic design and libraries, I wanted to start sharing some of that on this blog. So let’s get into it.

First, I had to share this article from Lifehacker on How You’re Sabotaging Your Creativity Every Day. Go ahead and read it; I’ll wait for you here. I really like this article. It is a good reminder that we shouldn’t feel like we need to copy someone else’s schedule to be more creative. It is about what works best for us. And, if you need one, the article gives you the excuse to keep working on side projects, which I think is great. I would also add that we have to give up the myth that we just wait around for the muse to strike to be creative or that we have to keep a totally rigid schedule to be creative. I think it is great to have a schedule and figure out your best times to work. It helps to be consistent and work consistently as you are more likely to train your brain to know when you are “being creative.” But, on the flip side, not all of us can always keep a consistent schedule for our creative work. I’ll give you an example.

While not the most creative work I do, I would argue that writing up research articles takes a measure of creativity. You have to synthesize literature, you have to be creative in spotting where you can make a contribution, and you have to ultimately write up your findings in a way that will get accepted for publication if you want to share out your results in the peer-reviewed literature. Being in a position where publication is expected, I do this quite often and it is definitely a creative and at times exhausting process. When I first started in my position, I could only write in the mornings and only if I had long, uninterrupted stretches of time. When I first started, I also had fewer commitments on campus which made this possible. Shutting the door actually worked and I could get work done. But now, almost 7 years on, I rarely am able to take a day away from campus (or even a half day) to dedicate to writing. It’s kinda sad, but at the same time, I’m much better now at using 15, 20 minute breaks in my day to write and revise articles. My last article, which I’m currently revising, was written completely in small time pockets at work. So while I’m a huge fan of scheduling writing/drawing/creating time, I think it is also important to maintain flexibility to still be creative (and productive) when scheduling problems throw a kink in our best laid plans. Life happens, but we can still create.

On that note, I just wanted to share one design tip today. If you are interested in graphic design and are a librarian, look for inspiration and experience outside of the library field. Don’t confine yourself to literature, webinars, courses, etc. that are written only within our field. One of the best, fondational books I just read for graphic design was Best Practices for Graphic Designers: Grids and Page Layouts. It is an excellent introduction to using grids to organize your designs and the importance of planning before creating designs. I highly recommend it.

I hope you have a lovely weekend planned full of everything that makes you happy. I’ll be back next week with more news and notes. Allons-y!