Productive Counter-Production

Vinalhaven, ME — June 19–July 2, 2016

• Perfectly beautiful time by Critter
• A designer designing ‘Designing Designers’ by Jimmy Luu
• Line Work by Mary Banas
• Reading Project by Julie Hertzog
• The Afield by Anthony Hawley, Rebecca Fischer
• Greetings from the Mainland by Gabrielle Esperdy
• Intertwining threads: portraits of design inquirers by Charles Melcher
• Reflection, Absorption, and Communion by Todd Barsanti
• Strange Metaphors by Belinda Haikes
• Wanderings and Wonderings By: Margo Halverson
• Design Inquiry is… by Matt Soar
• Netmaking, Lesson 1 by Emily Luce

Recent research has shown that creativity, regardless of its form or content, frequently benefits from what is conventionally called procrastination. For many people, stepping away from the task at hand — whether we are writing computer code or a scholarly monograph or designing a typeface or a building — can stimulate new ideas and help us move beyond normative thinking. As Adam Grant observed in the New York Times, “When you procrastinate, you’re more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.”

Productive counter-production is about deliberately and self-consciously making alternative use of one’s time. Or, to put it another way, it’s about transforming a critical tension between one activity and another so that one form of creative work begins to stimulate another.