Stone Soup...Design Style!

On Tuesday October 5, 2010, in my Design 001 class, each student was told to bring items from home to "create" with and to use the Stone Soup concept to make something, anything. Our group brought everything from paper, to buttons, to bottle caps, to paint, to string, and much more. We used everything we could, including collections of other media found around the area we worked. We at first started slowly, trying to figure out what to use and in what way, however once we came up with one idea, it seemed to snowball into a collection of wonderful ideas that came together to create a beautiful design. It took everyones imput and everyones ideas to create this wonderful "Stone Soup" design style. By collecting not only our different meterials, but also our ideas, we were able to create something from almost "nothing." We did not think of a purpose for our design, we just simply created and we had found a purpose through the process. We were able to have not only other groups, but other students passing by between classes stop and look at what we had created. We were all very proud our work and kept adding to our "tree" until we realized that class was over and we had to clean up our creation. I think that by using this exercise through out our design carrer and beyond we can come up with new ideas and expand our knowledge of the creative process. Try this with others and decide for yourself if you think the "Stone Soup" theory works. It was a major success for our group. Here is a link to more photos of our piece if you missed it or if you were not at UC Davis last Tuesday: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26643781@N04/sets/72157624999142491/