Trajectories of the Creative Process: A Multiple-Drafts Analysis of Graphic Design

Most experimental analyses of creativity look at one-shot production tasks. However, real-world creativity occurs over long periods of time and involves extensive exploration and revision. We carried out a week-long study in which graphic design students created an advertisement for a fictional business, submitting daily drafts of their evolving ad. By analyzing the successive changes to these ads across the 7 daily drafts, we sought to characterize the trajectory of the creative process for each designer. In doing so, we elaborated on the core concept of the Geneplore model (i.e. generation + exploration) by proposing a 2 × 2 predictive scheme of creative trajectories in which a) the generative phase specifies either a global plan of the final product or merely a kernel idea for it, and b) the exploratory phase proceeds in either a linear or nonlinear manner, thereby resulting in four basic trajectories. We analyzed the relative frequency of these trajectory-types in our 37 graphic design students using a novel “change analysis” method. In addition, we examined how the novelty, quality, and stylistic features of the final ad related to the trajectory-type of the creator. The results revealed that there are multiple routes toward achieving a comparable level of novelty in a creative product.