CHAPTER VII - 7.2 Questionnaires.

7.2 Questionnaires.

During the period between September and November, I sent out a total of 70 questionnaires to artists and graphic, web, product, interior designers and graphic design students, from different countries. These people are from Hong Kong, Japan, Sweden, United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and others. The results of the questionnaires are below:

Among 70 questionnaires, 50% agree that dreams are great potential to creativity. The majority of people think that dreams will influence a person’s emotion and idea (81.4% and 67.1%).

After analysis, it shows that people who think dream plays a role in the process of creativity are people who often remember their dreams, between 40-79% of range. Also, these people do think that dreams affect emotion and the way of thinking in waking life. Moreover, 100% of these people think that the contents of their dreams have meaning. However, among those, only 66% of people mention that they have been inspired by a dream to work out a creative task. People who have experienced inspiration from a dream mention that they have dreamt of something which they have not seen in waking state, so they think dreams are great sources for creativity. One dreamer mentioned that he heard a melody in a dream, and he composed a song based on what he heard in the dream after being awake. An artist mentioned that he used to extract the environment from a dream to apply in the background of his painting. A graphic designer showed that the colors in the dream were far more interesting than when she saw in waking life and the composition of the color in her dream inspired her to work out her projects. Another dreamer mentioned that sometimes she woke up and remembered some images of the dream, and then those images and the mood of the dreams would finally become the theme of the artwork after some speculation.

In general, people think dream play a role in the process of creativity due to the following reasons:

-    Dreams are abstracts, bizarre, unlimited, without boundaries, so unusual and the images they see are far more interesting than in waking life;
-    Dreams come from the subconscious mind;
-    Dreams shape people’s mind;
-    Dreams are part of life and we don’t cease thinking during sleeping;
-    Many evidences show that dreams inspire creativity;
-    Dreams think broader than in waking state;
-    Our sensations are more intense in dream;
-    What we can’t do in waking life, but in dreams we can, so dreams foster creativity;

On the other hand, people who don’t think that dreams play a role in the process of creativity present personal reasons like:

-    Dream images are bizarre, illogical and are too abstract to be understand;
-    Dreams are only useful for artists but not designers because designers think logically;
-    Dreams are hard to recall;
-    Dreams images are not interesting and are as usual as waking life;
-    Dream contents are irrelevant with creative work.

It is interesting to note that “bizarre” and “abstract” can be viewed as inspirational and non-inspirational. Some people view bizarreness and abstract elements as great sources for creativity while others do not. Moreover, people usually dream of images just as usual as in waking life, consider dreams could not give them inspiration for creativity. On the other hand, people usually dream of unusual images, get easily inspiration from their dreams.
 
Finally, it concludes that people who remember their dreams more often think dreams play a role in the process of creativity, and how we view our dreams is also essential to make dreams inspirational.