Introducing the latest Technick Designer: Joshua Sanchez of Visual Vantage

It’s my pleasure to introduce Joshua Sanchez as the newest addition to the artist team at Technick Designs. He has a really impressive design portfolio on Cargo Collective consisting of logo designs, branding initiatives, and beautiful real estate photography. He is based out of South Florida and will work with Technic Designs remotely. In his portfolio, you’ll see exquisite and meticulously edited photographs of multi-million dollar homes in the South Florida area as well as elegant logo and branding initiatives. Josh has true artistic talent, and Technic Designs is very grateful for all his help, consultation, and designs.

Creative Income Streams – Peer to Peer Lending with LendingClub

Peer to Peer (P2P) lending has recently emerged as a viable option for an alternative income. New books are emerging that chronicle how P2P lending is radically disrupting how loans are transacted, such das The Lending Club Story: How the world’s largest peer to peer lender is transforming finance and how you can benefit. I have been investing with LendingClub for about 10 months and my experience has been positive.

Creative Income Streams – Online T-Shirt Store

As an artist, I have a lot of drawings and sketches laying around not going to much use. I’ve decided to put a few of those designs on clothing, canvas prints, posters, and other products, such as coffee mugs, key rings, and postcards. The art products are branded under the name Technick Designs, products for a creative lifestyle.

I have a few other ventures happening right now, such as my creative startup company, so I wanted to ask a few friends for help. We are going to compile our designs and divvy up the profits.

One of my partners, Joshua Sanchez, helped with the graphic design for the header image on Google+, Facebook, and Zazzle Store Front. Check out his design portfolio on Cargo Collective and the Visual Vantage website to see other work that he’s done.

Calming Your Creative Space with a Meditation Art Sculpture

I’ve been meditating for years now and along the way I have developed a skill for creating harmonious meditation sculptures. These sculptures carve out a relaxing space for meditation in a living room, bedroom, or study. Meditation sculptures are arrangements of  buddha statues, crystal spheres, polished stone, candles, artwork, and other items. There are guides to Feng Shui, but the type of sculptural artwork described here is personal and subjective because it is meant to aid in meditation, relaxation, and calm reflection. Although each sculpture will be uniquely manifested by the creator, I’ll describe the method and thought processes I go through to create my meditation sculptures to help give you some ideas about your own!

The Greatest Inventions are Simple – Revolutionary Tooth Floss

Dental health is important. We all know that. Generally, people brush their teeth regularly, but they do not floss as often as they should. The main reason people don’t floss is because it is difficult and time consuming. A great flossing alternative has been around for years, but it has not caught on mainstream yet, which is interesting from an economic and business perspective. Great business ideas are supposed to be those that fill a consumer need at a compelling price point. This product does just that, yet it remains largely undiscovered.

As an advocate of creative living, I wanted to let anyone who is interested know about this simple yet revolutionary dental technology that makes flossing a breeze. You can buy the product at amazon or pick it up at your local walgreens/cvs/walmart etc.

Creative Entrepreneurship

The idea of starting a business has been brewing for some time among my friends and I. It takes courage and conviction, but the payoff could be good in terms of monetary payoff and impact on a field.

I think the direction I would want to head in is some sort of creative consulting. But this would not be anything new. There are creative consultants in many fields, and they have to do with marketing, advertising, and positioning a product in a new and meaningful way. What I think I would like to pursue is creative problem solving. Actually helping in the design process for products that, preferable, are dedicated to helping people be creative. I like to deal with creativity at a meta-level and think about how it works and how to facilitate it.

I’ve been starting to work on the neuroscience of creativity by integrating biofeedback into the creative process using NeuroSky’s MindSet. In my most recent PhD project, I am recording brainwaves to analyze how creativity affects the mind, and also to integrate those neural impulses into the creative process.

I’ve long dreamed of a creative medium that directly interfaces with the brain and allows one to dream up creations and then manipulate them with the hands. Very similar to an early video that envisions the future of augmented reality in World Builder:

Time Art

A theme running through my artworks and art musings in the past few years (and one touched on in my last post on the stock market) is the concept of art through time. I like to think about the creative process through time.

There are many methods for capturing this process. One is to record the process and play it back. I have briefly experimented with this medium with a quick sketch that I posted on youtube. It was only a half-hour doodle with oil pastels, but I did quite like the result:

How do stocks fit into a creative life?

I must admit, I am an individual of diversified passions. I’m an artist, and this is, perhaps, the side I identify with most, and like to identify with most. However, I am also extremely interested in technology, design, urban planning, and the stock market.

What may be the common thread in these seemingly diverse activities, you may ask? Dynamism. At heart, I think I am a futurist. Content in constant flux. Finding awe in the natural flow and rhythm of production, creation, destruction. For this reason, I wonder at natural phenomena such as the beating drone of a water fall. Trying my eyes to focus on one point and conceptualizing what it means to have all that water in constant motion. And further expanding this thinking to conceive the river as both a flowing entity, teaming with the dichotomy of molecular holism. The river existing as an extension in time and space linking distant lands-a flowing thread made of singular bits convinced to travel together.

The Two Step Dance of Creation: Act, Think

Continue from last post…..The desire for creative liberty seems to be like a pressure valve that needs to be released every so often, at indeterminate intervals. Depending on what kind of problem, one’s mood, how efficiently one is working, the pressure rises, and once it reaches a threshold, one will run into a problem or creative roadblock in the project.

At this point, it is necessary to do some action to relieve this creative urge. This can be in a number of ways. The difference between the two poles of the model I have just presented in the last article, supporting creativity, is that stage one, creative liberation, could be summarized as action, and stage two, creative delibaration, could be summarized as thinking. However, this is a slightly different kind of thinking in the head. This type of thinking follows more closely with the distributed cognition definition of thinking. Humans use our environments in order to work out problems and manipulate material and physical entities (words, paint, objects, etc.) to help conceptualize a problem.

Supporting Creativity from within the Concept

The four step theory of creativity widely cited in the creativity theory literature is a good place to begin thinking about computational approaches that can augment and supplement the process.

1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Implementation

This kind of thinking usually happens in the context of problem solving. It is usually not an open ended creative context, such as the scenario of abstract art I have discussed before. However, on this side note, the abstract art previously discussed enters into this phase after a perceptual logic has been constructed.