Stay up late.
I mean, REALLY late. To the point where you are no longer tired, and then a little bit past that. Gets your mind working in mysterious ways.
I come up with ideas all the time. It comes so often that I try to bring a scrapbook wherever I go to write it down. But enough chest-pumping: In my opinion, crafting great ideas comes from having 2 things:
- Information
…or knowledge, or data, or whatever. The more you know, the more you have experienced, and most importantly, the more you understand, the deeper and clearer the well you will have to tap from to produce great ideas. This is very important if you not only want to be creative, but stay creative. Too many people lack this. Look at the rap industry: so many rappers rap about the same subject matter over and over (not all, mind you). Why? Because these artists have a very limited set of experience to draw ideas from (some would say that is because those topics consistantly produce sales, but that is a topic for another time).
So read, do new things, listen to people with perspectives different from your own (ex. I’m very left, but I listen to Conservative Christian radio all the time), travel etc. I live by the motto “Any knowledge that one doesn’t have, should have.”
But keep this in mind when developing that well of information:
- Observe.
- Analyze.
- Remember.
Soon you’ll be grabbing what you learned from one experience, and putting it together with another with such ease it becomes automatic.
And one other thing, even if you dont think it has anything directlt to do with the market you are advertising in, explore it anyway. You’d be surprised what you may get from it in the future
2.The Skills to use the information
This is also not to be ignored. There are many creative people who get carried away with their ideas, that they end up with duds (Tim Burton is a good example of this)
Since you are in advertizing, I don’t think I need to say much more here. Your schooling should cover this part well.
Advertising is a very competative business. Good luck.
^What this guy said.
Consume a lot of information. Go after books and other media in the subjects that interest you. As for coming up with ideas, there are ways to twist whatever inspiration you get from the previous books and media into new ideas.
SCAMPER is one (technically seven). There have to be more out there if you look for resources on creativity.
^What this guy said.
Consume a lot of information. Go after books and other media in the subjects that interest you. As for coming up with ideas, there are ways to twist whatever inspiration you get from the previous books and media into new ideas.
SCAMPER is one (technically seven). There have to be more out there if you look for resources on creativity.
And get into the habit of writing down your ideas. A Notebook, Microsoft Word Document, whatever. When you really get into this habit, your brain might come up with more ideas since it knows they’re not being “wasted.” I base that on NOTHING other than my own sessions of writing essays and stuff like that.
Isolation. If you spend enough time by yourself, your mind will start finding ways to keep you amused. Keep yourself stiumulated, that way you’ll have a lot of thoughts, experiences and ideas, resist the urge to share them, there will have no where to go but to fester inside your head. After a while they “ferment” and become something new. They develop, mutate and become unlike what other people would imagine, a unique product of the conditions that birthed it. By staying away from people you unlearn how to act like them, making your most mundane ideas seem wild and alien.
Although, if you do it too much you become a twisted individual and people won’t like you. Also, this may take years of social reclusion depending on how well socialized you are…so…you might need to get on it right away.
Try and come up with some sort of starting general starting point and end point. Have some topics and things of that sort set up for yourself as you go. Make sure you have yourself some sort of road map before going into directionless thought.
Just as important as things you want to come up with, think of some angles that you want to apply on your ideas.
Write and come up with a lot more shit then you need. Then whittle it down piece by piece and shift things around to convey what you want. You may or may not be trying to come up with the perfect, finished product and have it flow perfectly in one shot. It almost never works like that, come up with and always realize that you can adjust anything you want, add subtract and whatever until you finish it. Take the pressure of yourself.
Oh yeah, read some books on some general writing, creative writing, advertising etc. Start a blog, write it, and advertise it. Stretch out your own capabilities in other ways.
Get away from that shit for a while if you’ve really been locking down and getting mental blocks. That really helps me in anything I do.
Have a pad and pencil wherever so you can write stuff down on the fly 24/7. A lot of good ideas jump in your head when you’re not actual siting in front of your desk or whatever, then are forgotten for good.
This is just a random list of stuff I do when I’m writing or doing digging for ideas for stuff.
I went to art school and I do painting and graphic design so most of the time I’m trying to solve multiple problems with one gesture, and what I figured out after 4 years of art school is that there really isn’t any sort of system that works consistently, so you just have to work with probabilities. Developing and refining ideas is much easier than coming up with one. I suggest just keeping a little notebook around and writing down anything that comes to mind, even if you don’t have a project at the moment. I sketch typography on the subway and I try to find good combinations of materials in my spare time, because I’ll have a bunch of ideas around so if work comes up chances are I’ll already have some concepts I can develop for it. Old European painters kept their studios full of paintings that only had the initial layers, so if any patron wanted a specific painting they could just finish what’s already there and not wait 6 months for the layers to dry, and this is kind of the same thing but in your head. There’s no way to consistently get good ideas just by sitting down and grinding at it, since all that’s going through your mind is whatever is routine at the moment
free writing also helps, but it’s best to have something in mind before doing it
^Wow, The scrotal_region coming up big, I completely agree.