The platter salad is a creativity platform.
These exercises use the platter, rather than the typical deep salad bowl, as the canvas for creation and a means to illustrate the universal process of creative thinking and design. No matter the creative field, the steps of creativity are the same. Here we’re using salads because, unlike painting or logistics, we all have some experience with salad. Salad is a low stake, easy medium for practicing everyday creativity. Plus, your installation eats will feed you well and shouldn’t we all be eating more salads anyway?
We call it PLATTERAL THINKING!
For an introduction to platter salads, read Welcome to Platter Salad Creativity.
This exercise is simply a visual for getting to know and appreciating your own style of creation. Remember, no two salads are alike and we all have our own signature. Look at the two below. Notice salad number one has a free-style abstractness to the design.
Here’s salad number two. It has a more exact style. the oranges are arranged in rows. The cucumbers and snow pea strips are deliberately placed. Some folks prefer the freestyle, some folks prefer the more orderly one. Neither is better. They are both beautiful as are we all. In a very simplified world, these preferences are good personality indicators. The folks that prefer salad one, tend to be NFs (intuitive feelers) on the Myers Briggs personality indicator scale. Those that gravitate toward the orderly salad below tend to be STs (sensing thinkers).
It’s interesting to take note of your natural style and sometimes to try to create something that isn’t quite in your comfort zone. That orderly salad above was really not in my comfort zone. Try it with a few simple ingredients that have strong shapes and colors like these.
Orange slices in two colors
Cucumbers, thickly sliced and cut in half
Blanched snow peas cut into slivers
What if:
Left the snow peas whole, cut the cucumbers in slivers or thin rounds. roughly cut the oranges. There are millions of variations even when using a few ingredients. How would it look with just one color of orange?
