8. Creative Processes and Style

Cognition, as introduced in Chap. 1, is the human intelligence process of organizing personal information through the use of human conscious awareness, visual perception, reasoning, and judgment to accomplish everyday tasks. In design fields, designers apply design cognition to organize design information for creating artifacts. Here, design cognition is the ability to manipulate images, utilize rationale, and create three-dimensional forms to generate a product that serves a function. This ability, usually occurring in the design process, is recognized as a phenomenon and pattern of doing things. For example, as shown in Chap. 5, designers consciously utilize some invariant knowledge, rules, mental images, and certain fixed sequences in design processes; certain constant features are also generated and distinguished as the representation of a style. Therefore, patterns of constant utilization of knowledge in design are described as the phenomena of style coming from cognitive operations, and the cognitive mechanisms applied in design provide the incentive for a style. Similarly, creativity is a phenomenon of cognitive operational results that share similar cognitive driving forces. This chapter explains the connection and correlation between the two phenomena of style and creativity from a cognitive perspective.