[Chocolate Microscope] HOW TO: Generate Ideas

[Brendan]

At one time or another we all get stuck. It's normal. If there's one thing you can count on in this business, it's the fact that at one time or another, you'll hit a wall on most of the briefs you work on. Sometimes the ideas will just flow, while other times the blank pages of your sketch book will sit there and mock you.

I've found that changing things up helps. No one has thought of a Lion winning idea after sitting in a dark room for the thirteenth straight hour. Get up. Dance around. Listen to music. Bake cookies. Go for a walk. Watch a movie (any suggestions Jordan?). Or if you always work at your desk, go work at a coffee shop - like I am right now. Shout out to Crema.

You can also work through idea producing exercises to ensure that you've examined the brief from every possible angle. Just like we talked about in class, you need to look beyond the literal interpretation of the brief.

If you click below, I've attached an excerpt from Mario Pricken's book, Creative Advertising. This particular PDF is a methodology for producing ideas.

Click below for KICK START.

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Posted By Brendan to Chocolate Microscope at 11/08/2009 04:07:00 PM

[Richard Bingham]

There is very good evidence from the world of neuroscience confirming what Brendan says. I won't bore you with the details. But every creative person in the world knows this instictively, and often actively makes it part of his/her creative practice: creative loafing.

In other words, you stuff your head with every fact you can, every bit of relevant info around the problem and then you brainstorm your ass off until your brain is a limp dishrag and you have hit a total dead end. And then you go do something totally different. It looks like loafing but in fact wht you are doing is freeing up the right side of your brain to fanning out into your subconscious trying out connections and looking for that bit of AHA creative insight. Which it often does when you are in the shower, or in the middle of a downward dog or an episode of the Wire.

At which point the right brain immediately contacts the left prefrontal cortex (which you have distracted with yoga or bathing or whatever) and says Dude -- check this out! And the left brain says Yeah! that's what I was looking for all along!

It's also what James Webb Young was talking about in "A Technique for Producing Ideas". A book you all shoudl be (re-)reading at least once every coupla years. It's gold.

http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2007/09/all-you-need-to-know-about-cre.html

rb

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Richard Bingham

Professor

School of Media Studies, Creative Advertising

Humber College 416-675-6622 x3018