Claude Shannon Instigates My Creative Journey

Claude Shannon and his mathematical theory of communication was actually an indirect precipitator of my creative journey. I say this because, although I’ve been artistically inclined all my life, last year when I read a brief passage on information theory and entropy in a biochemistry book, my career path changed. I was intensely fascinated with the ideas presented as they felt applicable to a struggle I was experiencing: having fallen out of the structure of education into increased entropy (disorder), leading to decreased translation of concrete results. This ignited thoughts on how I viewed the balance between structure and creativity, and I found what I truly wanted was a foundation and flexibility to further develop what I considered a strength: my creativity. Events precipitated quickly after; I took on a four-month internship as a business development specialist at a consulting company, taking a close friend’s advice I decided to specialize in copywriting, and the road has led me here to the GSC Creative track at FIU and MAS.

Below are 4 aspects of my creative journey: where I’m coming from, where I am today, where I’d like to be, and a handful of insights I’ve gathered on the way.

 

  1. Passion, the Roots

I searched for the elemental things that made me happy and passionate, and that was choreography and reading nonfiction. I revel in the creative process of forming body language to the structure of music, and having these fragments turn into phrases and filled 8 counts that very much reflect paragraphs. Teaching a piece to be performed allowed me to magnify an idea/design/emotion onto a 3-D canvas of dancers and a stage. Choreography surprisingly taught me about writing from the heart, in concise and captivating terms. On the other hand, reading nonfiction constantly challenged and reshaped my perspective. Open before me were peoples’ minds and their life experiences, logically structured so that I could better understand their thought process. If I had ever felt alone in a crowd, books made me feel complete with the company of beautiful ideas.

  1. Today, the Grind

The typical grind of the day-to-day basis of a graduate student in copywriting has been about mining lectures and textbook data into notes, drawing interpretations, solving problems as an individual or team, then organizing and presenting well-curbed thoughts. I tend to compare and contrast what I’m learning now to what I’ve read or learned in the past by experience. For example, I now realize that the qualitative approach of ethnography happens to be a prominent theme in a literature I’ve read; The Native Speaker by Chang Lee depicts an ethnographic approach to life as a minority (observant and immersive). A couple of significant ideas that I remember off the top of my head are: that businesses paint a palpable picture of human nature (for example, the needs that are fulfilled by the intangibles of brands), and that the research process faintly reminds me of the structures I’ve seen in biology (for example, the translation process of DNA to protein vs. translation of decision statements into research questions).

 

  1. Goal, the Prize

I want to be excellent at solving creative problems. I want to state what is on my mind with clarity that elucidates my thought process. I want to show people that the world isn’t as immovable as it seems at times, that it’s malleable. I hope to work with people who are highly passionate, creative, and purposeful. As I was looking through copywriting portfolios at the Modern Copywriter, Phil Gable’s solitarily stood out to me for unique and well-executed ideas; I’d strive to create work at this caliber (philgable.com). If it seems that this section is rather brief, it’s because to be utterly candid, my specifics have not developed into completion quite yet.

 

  1. Insight, the How-Tos

Here are a couple of potentially helpful things that I picked up in my creative struggles. Remember there’s always a measure of chaos that naturally plays into projects; find ways to minimize it but carry forward (short message: things will go wrong, be okay with it and fix it). You must have a unified purpose whether in art or communicative piece (essay, painting, choreography, etc) so that the message doesn’t fall static or dimensionless. Creativity is akin to a muscle that takes discipline to exercise and grow, so take the time to explore and solve creative problems. I realized when I don’t make time to do the creative things I’m passionate about, my engines become rusty and I have to rev them back to speed. Be sponge-like and take in tons and tons of information in texts, visuals, and conversations; the more variations you can soak in, the more creative you can be in the end.

 

This was a piece of my mind in a nutshell and I hope that it was insightful to my personal copywriting journey.

 

Always,

Jennifer Jinhee Jhang