I came across an interesting article from Warner Berger on the AIGA site about his observations of designers and the qualities that he witnessed. One of the most interesting insights had to do with how designers tend to question everything:

"It’s a gift designers have that I’m not sure they fully appreciate: the ability to recognize that the present reality is a temporary and changeable condition. (To the rest of us, reality looks like reality, something to be accepted with a shrug.) I think all of this is captured nicely in the joke some designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?"

This struck me as a fascinating way to describe one of the inherent traits of just about every designer I have ever met: The ability to come up with something out of nothing.

We understand reality as malleable and ever-changing, as something that can be manipulated to help find a solution to a problem. By asking questions (usually about anything and everything) we are able to break away from the confines of present reality and explore other possible solutions that might not otherwise have been considered.

I believe in an iterative and experimental approach to design (really to all creative pursuits), as a means of finding the best solutions to a given problem. Questioning everything is a natural part of such a process, and I rely heavily on academic research as a means of explaining why such an approach works -- certainly cognitive research provides a lot of support for such a methodology.

But in the end, I think Berger's observation is a much more eloquent way of explaining how we, as creatives, visualize the imaginary.