Daniel Eatock – visual linguist – answers 12 questions relating to the creative process
C O N C I O U S N E S S
In a nutshell, what do you do?
My specialism is lateral thinking, resolving the complexity encountered in the world with reductive poetic logic. I intertwine commercial and cultural practice: responding to the paradox of daily life and the complexities of project assignments. I seek focused solutions that feel inevitable. I get there by starting at the beginning, asking why, what if… then by making sense of the things I find with radical acceptance and embracing truth.
What’s your creative process; how do you get stuff done?
Begin with ideas.
Embrace chance.
Celebrate coincidence.
Ad-lib and make things up.
Eliminate superfluous elements.
Subvert expectation.
Make something difficult look easy.
Be first or last.
Believe complex ideas can produce simple things.
Trust the process.
Allow concepts to determine form.
Reduce material and production to their essence.
Sustain the integrity of an idea.
Propose honesty as a solution.
Everyone works differently. When did you become aware that your creative process is your own?
In primary school I was the best at drawing. My teacher, Mr. Bencley, called me ‘Little Picasso’, and I won all the drawing competitions and spent a lot of time making pictures. At high school, I was second best. Daniel Forster was much better. He could draw intuitively. I remember watching him draw from a plaster cast replica of Michelangelo’s David and later, during a vacation we took together in the south of France, I saw him make amazing pen drawings on the beach.
I am competitive, and since I knew I could not compete with Dan’s drawing ability, I understood that to be happy, I had to invent a creative way around the problem of making things look beautiful. So, whilst Dan was drawing perfect renderings of the beach, I drew two straight lines on a page, dividing it into thirds. I wrote ‘sky’ in the top third, ‘sea’ in the second, and ‘sand’ in the bottom third.
I realised in that instant that the craft and skill of drawing can be overcome with an idea. This simple realisation has changed the way I approach almost everything I make. If something does not come naturally, I search out an alternative way to respond to the problem.
When are you most creative?
Two hours after I wake up and two hours before I go to sleep.
Can you be creative in a vacuum or do you need outside influences to help?
Being creative is living in dialogue and responding to everything in the universe, being fully present and in tune with yourself and creating moments of space to reflect and pause, allowing the mental chatter to fall away and the eureka moments to flourish.
E X I S T E N T I A L I S M
Did you seek being creative or did creativity find you?
Everyone is born creative. Most people grow out of it when their milk teeth fall out.
Do you think your background has had an effect on your creativity?
In a Zeno paradox way I sit exactly halfway between determinism and free will.
Have you ever struggled with creativity?
Struggle is part of creativity, there is no creativity without struggle.
D I S R U P T I O N
Is there any one person, thought or thing that’s changed the way you think?
The dematerialisation of art and design, the notion that a thought can be the work.
Do you have one piece of advice for anyone starting out as a creative?
We are all born creative. We can help babies and children keep their wide eyed wonder and rapid evolving questioning by not limiting, judging or squashing their play and freedom.
R E F L E C T I O N
Do you think creativity has defined you?
In equal parts to being a husband and a parent.
What would you like to do if you weren’t doing what you do now?
Meditate and run.