The Alphabet Superset - a Six Month Project Coming Soon!

My bedtime routine to get Ollie asleep often involves hours of trying to entertain myself while not being able to move or make much noise. Sometimes that means I watch some muted YouTube videos on my phone. One of the YouTube channels I always enjoy watching is Struthless - artist, philosopher, encourager, author, etc. He has been on a kick, a curiosity-fueled pursuit of unlocking productivity and creative flow. He created a blueprint to unlock your creative juices and offered it free to anyone who wants to join in. I thought it sounded fun but also like a way to help Shawn and me push forward to make new things. The framework is built around putting constraints on what you are creating. The constraints are part of what makes it work; as Igor Stravinsky said, "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self." 

The process is to make something every week for 26 weeks around 26 topics of your choice, starting with a different letter of the alphabet each week, AND to post each week. There are some breaks in the program to help make it achievable, but overall, it will be a goal of something new each week. While the A-Z topic changes each week, everything else stays the same. Each week, the medium, the style, the output size, and the overall theme are fixed. It doesn't say anywhere in the plan that we need to explain what we are doing, but it seems important to share with all of you what is happening behind the scenes and offer the resource to anyone else who wants to jumpstart their creativity. Unintentionally, our Working Dead series followed some of these guidelines - They were all zombies, using the same basic palette of colors for the zombies (but freedom on the colors of the accessories), and their deepest desire had to rhyme with brains. Shawn had some great ideas for professions, but if they didn't fit into the box, he had to reject them and focus on what did work. We weren't alone in thinking this opportunity sounded like a great push because 10,000 others have also signed on to try. If you like the idea and want to jump, here is the link; it is free, and this post is not a paid promotion. 

Shawn and I are each taking on this project in a slightly different direction to support our family business here at Boom Shark Designs. Shawn is going to be creating "The Cube Zoo: An Isometric Animal Menagerie"  (The Working Title), where he will take a less-than-usual (A-Z) animal, place it into an isometric world, and using a neon color palette, display it as if they were living in a cube. I'm very excited to see what happens; his test subject was adorable and Claymation-inspired. Seeing it as a collection will be amazing. I will be using our products as a centerpiece in a 1980s-inspired theme each week, using a digital version of that same neon color palette to highlight what we have created in a fun way. While we will post the Cube Zoo on the store as a shirt each week A-Z, the highlight I will do will be a few weeks off to allow me to use them in my 1980s expression. I expect much Bowie inspiration to show through.

Look out for the start of the Alphabet Superset to start a week from Sunday!