Creativity and Genres

 

Creativity is a necessary skill. Unfortunately, it is one that cannot be easily learned or taught. It can only really be developed through experience. According to Ron Beghetto, an internationally recognized expert on creativity, uncertainty is the catalyst for creativity. Basically, when a situation upends our thinking we have to innovate and be creative. Many of us can avoid these situations and even get through them without much creative effort. For this project though, creativity is a must. I could not do this without some level of creativity. In his TED talk the “Theory of Creativity”, Duncan Wardle describes the “river of experience”. He uses the analogy of people being mountains, and our experiences being rain. When we have specialized experience we have a river. Wide rivers are difficult to cross and as such experienced experts in a certain topic or field can have trouble being creative. For example, the Ford Company creates less automotive innovation than Google because Ford is so experienced in automotive production that anything new is ridiculous to them. He also tells the story of architects and a chef drawing a house. The architects draw standard houses while the chef draws a house based on a food dish. The architects then designed the house but the example points out that even experienced people can work creatively when prompted properly. Our introductions exercise exemplified this. Instead of using typical information to introduce ourselves, we listed ten things about us that are not common introductions, such as ten bucket list items. We are all experienced at introductions but we could all be creative given the correct prompting.  

The history magazine I research was the BBC World History magazine. It is a special interest magazine with a general focus of world history. It has a very wide variety of historical topics and does not focus too much on one specific era or region. It gives its audience a broad range of topics to read about. It does not dwell on one or a few overdone topics. I like this and would want to cover a fairly obscure yet relevant topic in my own project. The magazine also often has provocative articles that were specific written to spawn discussion. The masthead uses a plain black text with a standard style fond. The selling line is a critical essay-like piece that is either about current affairs or more commonly relating an historical event to the present day. I researched National Geographic as well. It is a more general interest magazine but still has a focused subject on general scientific topics. It likes to focus on natural sciences but usually drifts into other areas as well. I would like to incorporate the broad scientific scope of Nat Geo for my own project. The cover uses its famous design. The cover has a yellow border and the masthead is small but prominent. The font is a serious black. The selling line is the cover article, which is the sometimes the only article advertised on the cover. The cover will have a striking and high-quality photograph relating to the cover article.

I envision creating a history-based magazine mixed with other topics. I want to create a unique premise for my magazine to make it stand out. I want this mixed topic to allow me to put more analysis and original content into the magazine. History is a topic I have always liked and I have a pretty well rounded historical knowledge. I always enjoy many other topics and almost any topic can be combined with history to form an interesting fusion topic. A pure history magazine would not be particularly unique nor would its content be original. It would end up being basically a report that is just a synthesis of other sources. I want to be able to put my own element of originality into the magazine without it being an opinion magazine. I think by combining history with another topic, such as geography or economics, would create a topic where I could easily to report and objectively write based on original sources, but also leaves enough room for analysis and my own theorizing. I want a way to do this but not make my analysis be too opinion based. I could easily create an historical opinion magazine, but I think combining history with another subject would allow me the room to use original analysis that does not stray too far into opinion.