The Ohsome Inc Blog

Creativity Test

As creative professionals, many of us assume that creativity is an inherit trait: you have it or you don’t.  Well, there’s a lot of science that argues that creativity can be learned and even honed into a finely tuned skill.  In the vein of trying to flesh out some ways to work on creativity, we stumbled across Epstein Creativity Competencies Inventory for Individuals or ECCI-i.  What this little quiz does is judge you in four main areas thought to be the main pillars of creativity: New Idea Preservation, Challenge Seeking, Skill & Knowledge Broadening, and Physical & Social Changes.

It tells you what areas you do well in (we, for instance, are rock stars at changing up our environment) and what areas you can work on (skydiving is not our thing, we obviously need to take more risks).

While I wouldn’t put all my eggs in this test, we at Ohsome inc, found it fun and pretty insightful.  Check it out for yourself and let us know your thoughts.  In the meantime, we’ll be signing up to rock crocodiles to sleep in the wild – now that’s risky.

Charmin bathroom in Times Square

As a child, my brother was fascinated with bathrooms.  Anytime we were in a new place (restaurant, neighbor’s house, 7-11) he’d tell us he had to “go potty” even if he has just used it at the last location about 5 minutes ago.  This was, to my dad who had to accompany him, a pain in the you-know-what, but as he grew older and was able to take bathroom breaks on his own, he would disappear more and more. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the last day of our 30 days of Creative Inspiration Exercises.  In order to honor the sometimes struggle we’ve had coming up with new exercises, our last one is going to turn the tables.  Come up with a creative exercise for yourself or your team.  Keep in mind the purpose is to have fun while getting to a different frame of mind – kind of like drugs, but legal.

Feel free to share your exercises here!

I love a good nightmare.  It’s arguably the only kind of trouble that goes away when you wake up.  Last night, I dreamt that I had a baby whose papoos kept catching on fire.  I spent all night continually putting out the flames, only for them to reappear.  Your exercise today is to interprete my dream.  Tell me what it reaveals about me as a person, what it means for my future and weather or not I’m lucky.

Everyone likes a poem.  Make a haiku to convince your boss to institute three day weekends.  Remember that a haiku doesn’t have to rhyme and their form is 5 – 7 – 5.

I’ve lost my glasses…again.  I’m not sure how it happened as they normally make their way into their case in my purse, but alas, they are gone.  Your mission today is to invent a device to help poor souls like myself find and keep their glasses in the future.  I don’t want any fancy neck string either – I want something stylish and sophisticated.  If it’s high-tech I’ll love it even more.

As creative professionals, many of our clients expect that we have what they term “traditional art skills”.  Well, just because I’m a graphic designer, doesn’t mean that I can draw.  Or at least that I think that I can draw.  The truth is, we’re too judgmental of our own work.  Today, we’re throwing that all out the window.  Grab your sketch book or a sheet of paper and choose something in your work area to draw.  There are three catches to this exercise.  One: YOU CANNOT LOOK AT YOUR PAPER. Two: YOU CANNOT PICK UP YOUR PEN.  Three: YOU HAVE A 60 SECOND LIMIT UNTIL YOU MOVE TO THE NEXT OBJECT TO SKETCH. Have fun and remember, when you’re done your sketch looks exactly the way it was supposed to.