Ideate: divergent thinking as part of the creative process
That feeling when you need to create ideas, but nothing really seems to come up or make sense, and the drawing board stays blank — I know that feeling very well. If I would have started this story by just looking at the blank document, it would have been hard to write and know which direction to go to. Granted, in most cases, starting impromptu on a blank canvas is not the case, but… often times you might feel stuck even when you have a solid creative brief and other great ideas.
Luckily, there are methods to get your creative juices flowing.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking” — Friedrich Nietzsche
Walking has been researched to have positive effects on creative thinking, taking a shower can produce “aha”-moments, drawing mind-maps and random doodling can be a good way to get inspired, motivated and ideas start to come up. Sometimes even just starting to do something unrelated can work wonders. Looking for ways to enter into the “zone” or focus-mode for better creative output. It is about getting you to think outside of the task at hand to get a new perspective on what you are working on.
Creative problem solving
In this story, I’d like to describe one method I’ve used when working on design projects that needed to generate ideas with the reasons to why. Concept or method-wise it lingers somewhere in the vicinity of Divergent Thinking and Remote Associates Test that makes use of Mind-Maps in a slightly customized manner. I don’t recall if I read about this process somewhere before or whether just simply adopted it for a creative brief I was working on. As a method this has helped me to create ideas for designs (especially logos and icon marks) that have a reasoning behind the design decisions.
Defining divergent thinking, remote associates and mind map
The terms convergent and divergent thinking were created in 1956 by the psychologist J.P. Guilford, who did a lot of research on the psychology of creativity and intelligence. Convergent thinking can be described as focusing on reaching one, well-defined solution to a problem in a more logical sense, whereas divergent thinking involves generating ideas and multiple solutions to a problem, most often through activities such as brainstorming. The goal for both is to reach the best possible solution.
Remote associates refers to Remote Associates Test (RAT) that was developed to measure convergent thinking by listing a group of words, and then requiring the participant to provide one word that links all the words together. For example: Sky / Fly / Distance = Airplane.
Mind mapping is a brainstorming technique to organize information in a hierarchical manner. Starting from the most important topic at the center and branching out to sub-topics. Similar to mind-maps, there are also concept maps, that help you to make connections between concepts. Mapping ideas allow you to see the bigger picture, ideate and make connections.
We'll soon put these concepts into action, but before we can go there, we'll need to first think how to approach all this and what we want to achieve from the brainstorming session.
Creating a starting point
Let’s say the desired end-output needs to be an icon mark or a logo. We’ll need to think of a creative brief to define and narrow down what we want to create. This could include questions such as: What is the identity you want to communicate? Is there something in the history of the company that can be used? Is there an existing design system/brand guidelines that should be followed? Where is the company located? Etc.
Why the logo of Nike is a swoosh? The brief was to create a “stripe”(industry terms for a shoe logo) that would communicate motion/movement.
Sometimes when working with clients, you may not have a clear brief to start with. In that case you need to think of one. For example, we could look at the company values, story, location, identity or mission statement to pull keywords to begin our idea generation process. These keywords can help to build towards a desired identity. Image is meant here as how customers see you, and identity meaning the desired image the company wants to communicate.
To illustrate the creative process, I’ve created a fictional mission statement and values based on existing companies as an example. No specific selection criteria was used to "create" the brand - I simply put together something to illustrate this method. This is an exercise for brainstorming ideas, not for selecting a final design concept. We can call the fictional company as: Divergent Phuture, hereafter referred to as “DP.”
DP is a company that focuses on creating high-quality hiking gear and footwear. Their mission statement is: To make nature accessible anywhere, anytime and to anyone. DP’s core values in short are:
We are Innovative, Passionate and Responsible. Our values speak to how we interact with the world and they strive us to enhance life on this planet. We care about: Earth, Wellness, Communities, People and Health. We pursue solutions for Nature and for People; which are the core of everything we do.
Now, let's create a brief that you'd might receive from DP:
"We would like to create an icon-mark for our new initiative that supports rural communities."
Ok, now that we have a brief, know what we want to achieve and know a little about the company, we can start the creative process.
Let's put the identity, divergent thinking, relation associates and mind-mapping into action
Selecting main topics for ideation
We’ll start by selecting some of the most important keywords that we want to try to communicate with the icon-mark/identity. In DP’s case, we could select the following: Earth, Wellness, Community, People, Health, Hiking. DP is a hiking gear and footwear player, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be literally tied to elements relating to hiking — but we can see where things go.
The most efficient way to do this ideation is with a pen and a paper, but if working on a collaborative project or remotely, using digital tools works fine as well.
While the main topics here are listed in a row, it is best to spread them out further apart from each other. This allows for breathing room and makes it a bit easier to spot links between words and re-occurring themes.
We have now several main topics that will be used as starting points.
Ideation with words and visual association
To branch out from the main-topics, we can start thinking what words could be used to describe these topics. This can be words relating to the topic and or visual associations related with the word. For example:
Health = heart shape, body, pulse line, +, nutrition, exercise, etc.
People = silhouette, group of people, stick figure, communication, etc..
Let's populate ideas (words) on the mind-map.
Sometimes using just words to describe an idea can be hard, therefore using simple doodles or images can support the ideation. I.e. how might we describe the motion created by wind? A rough example below.
Look for connections, links and re-occurring associations
Now that we have different words spanning out from the main topics, let’s look for connections and repetition among the words. When doing this, it is also important to keep in mind the goal of the initial brief and who you are communicating to. Spotting links and re-occurring themes can hint towards a possible direction.
Visualizing the connections
Now that we have a good collection of words (ideas), we can consider how these words could be visualized. I’ll select Water, Housing, Face, Nature and Strength from the map above. The illustrations at this point don’t have to be "beautiful", just quick doodles or images. Also, not all words listed necessarily need to be tried. Again, when selecting the ideas to pursue further, it is worth thinking how it can be tied to DP and their support for rural communities.
At the time, I felt hands/arm-wrestle could help communicate "support" and "community", but displaying them as is it might not be clear. So I went back a step and took the "heart-shape" from the previous map to include it in a new narrowed list of possible directions.
I could have asked ChatGPT for a list of words for the main topics, but there is a challenge that you are not actively engaging with the ideation process. It can help, but you will likely lose your train of thought by just copying the words listed by AI/ChatGPT, just like when interrupted during a conversation, but then once going back, you forgot where you were.
I decided to explore deeper into “hands” as I felt there could be something there.
The idea in this exercise is that the more you explore and think over the meaning and associations, the more ideas come up and you start making connections. This also results in new ideas on top of those existing ideas. In my case, after a while, I felt like I was in the "zone", constantly coming up with new ideas, associations and extensions.
For example, in this step I went from arm-wrestling to an icon showing two hands, but then expanded into handprints and footprints. Footprints could be interesting as it could tie the icon mark with the company, nature and people.
More exploration, more iterations, and more ideation. I’ll use the ideas from the previous mind-map to start sketching the ideas visually (with the goal of creating an icon mark).
Sketching ideas
Again, the sketches/ideas in this step don’t have to “beautiful”, it is about exploration and getting a feel of how these ideas might work visually, as we have been mainly dealing with word associations until this point.
I selected a few ideas/sketches that could communicate the desired brief. I especially thought that the footprint ideas was something worth exploring more.
Selecting ideas to move forward
When we think of logos such as Pizza Hut, Domino’s, BMW or Apple — they don’t directly illustrate the company’s products or the industry, but have an association to the brand via name, location, storytelling, etc. This is something that could be used as starting points for the brainstorming as well.
We could take these sketches and ideas further by asking the company some more questions (ideally done at the first step), such as is the rural community support limited to selected countries? What support really means? Will these change in the future? If the company would focus on support for rural communities in New Zealand only, we could consider highlighting New Zealand, however if the company were to expand their reach in the future, there might be a problem. Thinking beforehand how the solution could scale can work wonders.
As this story is about describing a method for brainstorming ideas, I will not continue the design iterations further. It was still interesting to see what ideas came up while based on the fictional brief and using this brainstorming method.
Wrapping it up
This is simply one brainstorming method among others. It can help in idea generation that serve a purpose to why such a design. It provides a reason and a direction.
In this DP example, I could choose to illustrate a swan as the icon mark — but why? What does the swan communicate? What does it represent or symbolize? Grace? Beauty? Love? Typography-only approach could be also possible. In these situations it is best to ask many questions upfront and consider how, why and where the idea would be used.
Cultural differences in word/image association can also have an impact on your process and final designs. Design direction can also be impacted by brands that have an existing brand guidelines.
I once did a visual design project of 50 images with a central theme being: create a futuristic animal, person or entity illustration impromptu, the design evolving and new ideas forming while doing said illustration - without any pre-planning. It was inspired by impromptu acting. This was an interesting project, but perhaps more an art project than a design one.
Designing with a purpose helps to define why.
How do you come up with ideas?
Thank you for reading.
References and further reading:
- Give your ideas some legs: the positive effect of walking on creative thinking
- Why do we get our best ideas in the shower?
- Convergent vs. divergent thinking: finding the right balance for creative problem solving
- The Remote Associates Test (RAT)
- What is a mind map? Tips, examples and templates
- Concept Maps
- J.P. Guilford - An American Psychologist
- Never done leaving a mark: Swoosh
