Trajectories of the Creative Process: A Multiple-Drafts Analysis of Graphic Design

ABSTRACT

Most experimental analyses of creativity look at one-shot production tasks. However, real-world creativity occurs over long periods of time and involves extensive exploration and revision. We carried out a week-long study in which graphic design students created an advertisement for a fictional business, submitting daily drafts of their evolving ad. By analyzing the successive changes to these ads across the 7 daily drafts, we sought to characterize the trajectory of the creative process for each designer. In doing so, we elaborated on the core concept of the Geneplore model (i.e. generation + exploration) by proposing a 2 × 2 predictive scheme of creative trajectories in which a) the generative phase specifies either a global plan of the final product or merely a kernel idea for it, and b) the exploratory phase proceeds in either a linear or nonlinear manner, thereby resulting in four basic trajectories. We analyzed the relative frequency of these trajectory-types in our 37 graphic design students using a novel “change analysis” method. In addition, we examined how the novelty, quality, and stylistic features of the final ad related to the trajectory-type of the creator. The results revealed that there are multiple routes toward achieving a comparable level of novelty in a creative product.

Acknowledgments

We thank Ninglu Weng and Jessica Cuciurean for their help in participant piloting and data analysis. We also thank Ana-Rita Morais and Lauren Wickwire for facilitating the collaboration with George Brown College to aid in participant recruitment. This work was funded by a grant to SB from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada (grant number 371336).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2024.2350843

Notes

1. Creative trajectories for individual works should not be confused with the lifetime professional trajectories of eminent individuals, as analyzed in historiographic studies by researchers such as Simonton (2010) and Kozbelt (2008).

2. The median was used instead of the mean since one participant had completed a graphic design degree in 1992 in another country and was undergoing a secondary program in Canada. It was decided that this participant met eligibility requirements since they were currently enrolled in a graphic design program.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [371336].