The Creative Quartet

On the 7th June 2012, the first pack of Artefact Cards was sold from a freshly-minted Shopify site, built by someone who only vaguely knew what he was doing.

Up until that point, Artefact Cards had been an experiment in redesigning the materials I was using in early Smithery workshops. I had wondered what might happen when instead of using post-it notes, I gave people something more robust, considered, and permanent, so that each idea could become an artefact.

This went on for a few months, and eventually I noticed that every time we finished a workshop, somebody from the client would quietly sidle up, point at the leftover cards, and politely enquire… “Are these ours now? Can we keep them?”

And so an idea became a tool, and the tool became a shop, and we became inadvertent shopkeepers.

Which we don’t do in a very conventional way, of course, because it’s not our main thing.

But once in a while we remember to try and do a conventional thing. And so for the first time in years, I have remembered to put a January Sale on.

Much discounts! Many value! Etc etc etc

And really, I should just stop there, because that’s what conventional online shopkeepers are meant to do; keep it short, give people links, entice them through to the site.

Instead, I want to tell you about The Creative Quartet, from this talk by Professor John Wood back in 2013.

It was one of the earliest points of reference I had for why putting ideas on cards, and moving and shuffling them round, just seemed to work.

Strangely enough, last year I found myself explaining it a lot to people in workshops again. In-person workshops are very much back, it seems.

And so thought it worth sharing with you too.

John Wood’s explanation of The Creative Quartet was based on the work people do together. If two people bring an idea to the table, then can find one synergy between those two ideas. But if another two people bring ideas to, then there aren’t just two synergies, or even four, but six.

At the time I first saw this, I clearly remember thinking ‘oh, that’s what’s happening with cards’.

If you have two ideas on separate cards, you can find one opportunity for combining them. And add another two cards, and all of a sudden you have six different combinations available.

And the maths magic doesn’t stop there. Add another four cards, and you’ll have a total of 28 possible two-card combinations. Add another four cards again, to make a total of just 12, and then you have 66 possible combinations. The secret of course, is developing methods and mechanics to keep shuffling those ideas around.

Which us what the basic form of a playing card does for us; it reminds us that these things can be ordered, stacked, placed, shuffled, split, ranked, all in a brand new order each time.

If you want to try it heading into this new year, here’s a thing I’m going to try myself.

I’m going to make a card for each of the things I want to do this year. Then keep them in a little stack on my desk, and occasionally shuffle and deal three.

Then what I think might happen is that it doesn’t just keep me accountable to individual ideas, but in dealing three at random I will be more likely to spot synergies and opportunities to combine them.

Whatever your plans are for 2026, I wish you all the very best with them.

Until next time.

John

PS. The Artefact sale is open to all, but unfortunately we cannot ship to the USA, due to things like this. Sorry, in so many ways.

PPS. “And now over to the local news where you are…”

Just before Christmas, I gave a talk at the Sussex & Brighton Devolution Policy Sprint. I’ve written it up here, and it’s called Sussex Is A Thing.

If you live in Sussex, or have an interest in its future direction (or have friends that do), then you could be interested in this. There are a few links in the post to follow up on if you want to find ways to be involved.