Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Thinking Outside of the Box


As a whole, graphic designers are problem solvers and critical thinkers - I am one of them. I am currently reading the book Thinkertoys by Micahel Michalko. It is a book about applying creative thinking to business. The goal of this book it to help you think outside of the box. There are many what I would call brain-teasers in this book. Here are some examples: 

Can you take away 3 matches to leave 4?

Or this one: How many cubes to you see?

And finally, what do you notice about this sentence?

Thinkertoys is all about helping you to shift your way of thinking. If you work in a design field, you hopefully already see the world in a different way than those around you. Shifting your thinking is something that everyone can achieve if they take the time to look at everything around them from a different perspective.
ANSWERS: If you are creative thinker you would see that to get 4, remove the top, bottom and right and you get the roman numeral for 4 (IX). For the cubes you see either 6 cubes or 7 cubes depending on whether you see the black squares as the top or bottom of the cube. And finally the triangle with the text I love Paris in the springtime has the word THE printed twice.

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