Flexing Design Muscles - Make sure you stretch first...

After seeing what was noted about building a bad design to help get your design muscles in line, I can believe that and it does make sense but I don't know if I would ever do it - Not make bad design but...

I know that there are some agencies where the management will attempt to make a game out of presenting creative little quandaries for the staff to work their way through, to help build the creative process, but this sounds more like a personal activity. I don't know that most of us might have the luxury of stepping that far out of the creative process to help get their creative minds' on the right path. It might be frowned upon in the workplace to try something like that.

Although, I could see how some might find designing badly could help them get back in line (but for all the badly laid-out car ads I prepared in previous years, it didn't seem to make me a better designer).

The one item noted that is so true, "It is better to have X bad ideas then none at all." 

I know that in the past I have been able to produce solid ideas based off some bad ones.

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I know that some may say that I was able to produce because of XY and Z. I did this and then I produced that, which was outstanding work. Many famous rock stars have contributed their most successful work produced from the drugs they were taking. -- Top of my Head, Scott Weiland Stone Temple Pilots --

Additionally, a friend of mine, his father is an artist who primarily does oil painting, sometimes sculpture. For years he worked on his fine art career and he was a really good local artist. Although, he used alcohol to produce his work, but his constant drinking turned him into a violent person so he had to stop. Now he has hardly any passion to create and when he paints he feels it just isn't the same without the booz. A lot of these I believe can be just chalked up to superstition and excuses. Knowing my friends Dad, he is creative, he has the ability, he just wants the alcohol so badly he has to place a crutch on it to move on.

So they essentially used something physically bad, and negative to steer them in the direction of something productive. Do you think that this is the case? I think that these additional stimuluses can help us create (not endorsing the use of drugs or alcohol in your creative process - maybe after the semester) but I also know that man's will is so strong sometimes that we will find a way to accomplish something without having to go down a dark or obscure path.