About Ideas

We are in the business of ideas. Idea is what lifts a print or website above the ordinary. As it is no amount of production technique can hide the underlying absence of ideas.

Big ideas are always simple and they are easy to understand. It is comforting to know that creativity doesn't create something out of nothing. It uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, breaks apart already existing facts, skills, and ideas.

Generating ideas

Hoping for inspiration is not always a good idea. It is better to start with gathering raw materials - reading and listening. Get out of the office and talk or observe people. Write down ideas even crazy or incomplete. At times you need to sleep on it.

The right environment is also important to generate ideas. Make it clear to the people you work with and yourself about being prepared to encourage and defend ideas.

Taking risk

There's also the need of tolerance for errors. Risk. Outstanding creative work is original in concept and execution. Original means untried, therefore entrails risk. Risk is at the heart of creativity.

Don't start by evaluating the idea or expecting it to be perfect. It's unfair to yourself. Seperate the evaluation of ideas from their generation.

Rigourous creativity pays, so generate as many - conventional or otherwise - ideas to refine and account after you've finish generating ideas.

Perhaps the hardest part of the work is still to come. No matter how brilliant, ideas don't sell themselves. They have to be sold - relentlessly, continually, creatively. An idea is not an idea until it is sold.