The 1 + 1 = 3 Method
Will Chau presents his 1 + 1 = 3 Method
Here’s an underexposed idea generation technique I just came across. It's by the designer Will Chau and he calls it The 1 + 1 = 3 Method. You can watch Chau's full presentation here.
First a disclaimer: there are no reliable formulas for creativity. Creativity is an innately mysterious act. It's a black box. But this doesn't mean you can't have some tools you reach for. Very often they won't work, but sometimes they will and that's where they earn their keep.
A press operator pulls the screw mechanism of an early printing press
A common feature of innovations is that they find connections nobody else could see. For instance, Johannes Gutenberg integrated a winemaking technology, the screw press, into the first printing press. For centuries this possibility was sitting there waiting to be discovered. Nobody saw the connection, perhaps because winemakers weren't interested in printing and printers weren't interested in winemaking. This is why creativity benefits from diverse interests.
Chau uses Banksy as an example of an artist who focuses on unusual connections, like the anarchist hurling a bouquet.
Banksy juxtaposes an anarchist with a bouquet of flowers
Chau's method focuses on this element, the unseen connection. Here are the four steps in brief, then I'll illustrate with an example.
The 1 + 1 = 3 Method (Slide by Will Chau)
1) Define the Problem
Real simple: what is the problem you're trying to solve? And yes, it is a problem. If you think it's not, find the problem.
2) Pinpoint the Tension
This is where we start finding those weird links. Look for the elements that don't fit together, that seem opposed. Find two contrasting elements and isolate them.
3) List the Associations
This is a brain dump. List the words and ideas that are related to these two contrasting elements. Nothing is wrong, let rip whatever springs to mind.
4) Connect the Dots
From the two lists you just generated, connect an item from one list to an item in the other.
Let's walk through an example to clarify. This is an example Chau uses.
1) Define the problem
The problem is "Design a logo for a food writer."
2) Pinpoint the tension
The tension Chau sees is between FOOD and WRITER. These are two disparate realms–food and writing are generally unrelated.
3) List the associations
Here's the two lists Chau generates.
Food
Fruit, fork, beef, knife, coffee, plate, spoon, kitchen, napkin, milk, market, grains, farmer, restaurant, steak, veggies, carrots
Writer
Screenplay, poetry, laptop, sentences, pen, scripts, fountain pen, pencil, paper, typing, blogs, Pulitzer, novel, essays
Spoon and fountain pen have a visual connection (Slide by Will Chau)
4) Connect the dots
Chau sees a visual connection between SPOON and FOUNTAIN PEN, he sees the possibility to embed the spoon shape in the nib of the pen. This is the logo he then designs.
Chau’s logo for a food writer
This solution is simple and elegant. Even a person with little graphic design skill could create this logo if they had the idea.
And that's the power of good ideas: they do a bunch of the heavy lifting for you. You don't need to spend ages rendering a beautiful thing. The good idea gets you most of the way to the finish line. Plenty of professional designers don't understand this and instead focus on creating sophisticated and laborious art.
Chau is a designer and I'm sure this method works well for design, but I'm equally sure it can work in many realms. You can use it to create a simple graphic for a business proposal. You can use it to compose a photo for a promotion. You can use it to create an intriguing name for an app, your podcast, or your brand. I tend to think it's best for distilling ideas down into smaller, simpler depictions.
That's it: The 1 + 1 = 3 Method. Try it out, file it away, and someday it might generate a great idea for you.
Thank you to Mars Garseeya for sending this along!
Copy Transform Combine Wallpapers
By popular demand, here’s a selection of Copy Transform Combine wallpapers. To download, right-click and choose “Save Image…”. Or you can even directly make it your wallpaper by selecting “Use Image as Desktop Picture.”
Or if you want the best resolution possible, download this ZIP file, which includes 5K versions.
Copy Transform Combine Wallpaper (Coffee)
Copy Transform Combine Wallpaper (Dark Blue)
Copy Transform Combine Wallpaper (Blue Gray)
HOW SAMPLING ALTERED THE UNIVERSE
HOW SAMPLING ALTERED THE UNIVERSE: a journey from Kool Herc to Janet Jackson to The Avalanches. If you have any thoughts, leave them in the comments on YouTube because they might get incorporated into the final video.
HOW SAMPLING ALTERED THE UNIVERSE: a journey from Kool Herc to Janet Jackson to The Avalanches. If you have any thoughts, leave them in the comments on YouTube because they might get incorporated into the final video.
TRANSCRIPT
In the early seventies in New York City, a new technique for creating music starts to form. At parties DJs are looping the dancers’ favorite parts of songs.
An early pioneer is DJ Kool Herc, who extends instrumental breaks by switching back and forth between two copies of the same record. And as many black entertainers had been doing for a long time, he sometimes speaks rhythmically over these beats.
Boom: rap music is born. And starts to grow.
Sylvia Robinson spots this new trend and assembles a team to record an actual rap song. She creates a group called The Sugarhill Gang, they copy the rhythm from Chic’s “Good Times”, and score rap’s first hit, “Rapper’s Delight.”
Grandmaster Flash takes Kool Herc’s simple idea, refines it and turns it into a new art. He records the first music created with turntables, and brings together Chic’s “Good Times” with a song it inspired, Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”
This technique of taking old bits of music and using it in new music becomes known as sampling. At first rap samples are mostly r&b, soul, and funk–lots of James Brown.
But soon artists are sampling different sorts of music, like rock. Run DMC and producer Rick Rubin sample The Knack’s “My Sharona” in “It’s Tricky.”
A Tribe Called Quest uses the bass line from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” in “Can I Kick It?”
The sampling gets more and more eclectic and more and more complex.
Public Enemy uses nonmusical sounds: speeches, sound effects, noise.
De La Soul brings together sixties rock, seventies soul, and eighties pop into a single song.
And the Beastie Boys and producers The Dust Brothers unite hundreds of samples in their album Paul’s Boutique.
Sampling spreads outside hip hop, into mainstream pop music.
Janet Jackson samples Sly and the Family Stone in “Rhythm Nation.”
A riff by Tom Tom Club first used by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and then over a decade later shows up in a number one megahit by Mariah Carey.
The group Len samples a forgotten disco hit by Andrea True Connection in their smash, “Steal My Sunshine.”
Madonna samples ABBA in her dance floor hit, “Hung Up.”
Meanwhile, in the adventurous outer realms of popular music, artists are sampling too.
Radiohead takes a fragment from an obscure piece of early computer music and around that construct their song, “Idioteque.”
M.I.A’s “Paper Planes” samples The Clash, a punk band that grew to incorporate rockabilly, dub, r&b, reggae and more.
Portishead record themselves playing instruments, press these recordings onto vinyl, then loop these records. They sample themselves.
Sampling reaches its pinnacle with The Avalanches’ album “Since I Left You,” which merges perhaps thousands of samples into a swirl of sound unlike anything else. The album is layered together from distorted bits of obscure songs, sketch comedy, and movie dialogue. The title track loops and speeds-up a variety of forgotten songs from the sixties and seventies, then slices up, pitch shifts, and rearranges a vocal into an entirely new melody.
Rap even transforms country music, where hip hop beats become standard. And some country artists are now using samples. Sam Hunt’s song “Hard to Forget” uses samples from a country classic by Webb Pierce.
But remixing is much older than hip hop. Earlier musicians were remixing too. They couldn’t sample, but they could still copy.
Just like rap is a remix, so is rock.
How to get ideas in 4 easy steps
Photo by CJ Drayit: https://unsplash.com/@cjred
Here’s how to get ideas in 4 easy steps–and you can read this in 60 seconds. This isn't just for artists or creatives. We should all be generating ideas.
1. Create boundaries
Choose an area to dive into. Keep it as small as you can, but no smaller.
2. Thoroughly explore within these boundaries
Read articles, read books, listen to podcasts, talk to people, try things, have experiences. This isn’t just about passive learning. Get out there in the real world.
3. Digest what you’ve learned
Review what you learned and make sense of it. Make connections, map it out, turn it into a story. Don’t just pile up information, you need to process it, refine it, nurture it, pull out the weeds. Think of it like a garden. You have to tend to it in order for anything to grow.
4. Drop it
You heard me right. Drop it. Move on. What you did with the first three steps is give your subconscious mind a bunch of problems to solve and it’ll get to work on them without you knowing it. Then the idea will just pop up later. When it does, grab it.
If this doesn’t work, return to Step 1 and try tightening or expanding your boundaries.
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On the Merits of Getting Lost... and What's Next
I worked on a project for 8 years. In this video I talk about what that was like, what I learned and I announce what's next.
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NEW VID: JOE ROGAN IS A LOST CAUSE
My latest explores Joe Rogan's weird alliance with one of the internet's worst people. (Please note: this video features some gross stuff.)
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Poster Clearance Sale
Copy-Transform-Combine Posters are now on clearance sale
COPY-TRANSFORM-COMBINE posters are now on clearance sale! They cost a mere $7.50, which is 75% off their regular price of $30. These are top-quality, screenprinted posters featuring Everything is a Remix's central tenet, "Copy Transform Combine." They are 24x36 inches (61x91.5 cm) and are available in three colors: Coffee, Blue-Grey, and Dark Blue. It should fit nicely in any home or office environment. Get yours now before society collapses!
A poster sighting in the wild
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Rogan Vs. Jones: The Ultimate Analysis
In my latest video, I treat Joe Rogan’s interview with Alex Jones with a seriousness and rigor it does not deserve.
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2020: My Year in Review
2020 was nobody’s favorite year and yet, it was a good year for my endeavors. In a surreal plot twist, the near-decade of work I’ve been doing in conspiracy culture suddenly became highly relevant. The bizarre claims and reasoning I’ve been neck-deep in for years emerged as a dominant force in American culture. I was ready to contribute to the conversation, I did, and I’ve still got plenty more to say.
Here’s everything I produced this year. I think some of my very best work is in this lot.
First and foremost, I finished This is Not a Conspiracy Theory! This brain-busting mega-doc was in production for eight years. You can buy it here right now and it should be appearing on additional platforms in the near future. If you backed the Kickstarter, DVDs and Blu-rays are in the works. You can watch the trailer/opening of This is Not a Conspiracy Theory below.
I then put out “Everything is a Remix: Reality” which uses the copy-transform-combine paradigm to explain how we make sense of the world and media. It was a Staff Pick on Vimeo.
After reading Enchanted America by J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, I was inspired to make ”Trump, QAnon and The Return of Magic.” This is the most popular video I’ve made in a while and it was also a Staff Pick on Vimeo. And it was briefly banned on YouTube!
The success of “The Return of Magic” led to my first commission for The New York Times, “What Can You Do About QAnon?”. If QAnon has found its way to your family or friends, this video offers insights and solace.
My last video of the year was “Constantly Wrong: The Case Against Conspiracy Theories,” which synthesized much of what I’ve learned about conspiracy theories in recent years. It’s a different and spicier take on conspiracy theories than the one in This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.
To close out this year, I’ve just written “Rogan vs Jones: The Ultimate Analysis,” which deconstructs the popular Joe Rogan interview of Alex Jones. This is a deep, deep, way-too-deep dive into this unintentionally informative conversation. It got so big, I’ve broken it into parts, the first of which will premiere early next year.
It’s been a big year filled with big conversations and I hope I’ve had some small positive influence. I couldn’t have done it without all of you. Thank you so much for your support. If you’d like to help me make more videos, come back me on Patreon. Or buy an Everything is a Remix shirt or buy This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.