First try setting a strategy and determine your objectives – what is the message? To whom are you speaking? How do you want to be perceived? What is the purpose? Who is the audience? What message needs to be communicated?

 

You will need to rely on your intuition, intellect, training and experience.

 

Brainstorm – make a list of anything and everything related to your subject. Discuss it with others and more ideas will lead to other ideas.

 

Gather even more information – knowing your subject inside out will trigger ideas.

 

Play with Visuals – Find some visuals related to your subject. Don’t design them-play with them. Try cropping, cut them up and reassemble them differently. Change the colors, add textures, combine images. Use paper that you would not ordinarily consider. Be adventurous.

 

Get some visual stimulation – Go to the movies. Look at old or antique labels, woodcuts, etchings, typefaces, and drawings. Go to a museum or gallery. Look at the best design and designers who inspire you!

 

Think of the wrong answer – You are probably so worried about the right answer that you may not be able to find it, so try to find the wrong answer. At least you know what not to do.

 

Let it be – Get away from it. Take your mind off the work itself. Take a few days away before returning to ideas and sketching. Sometimes concepts come when we are relaxed or doing something unrelated to the thesis project.

 

Change directions – If you have been exploring one direction of thought and nothing is happening, drop that direction and explore a new one. Try not getting stuck in a line of reasoning or anything if it is not working for you. Go in a totally different direction to find a concept.

 

Creative approaches can yield exciting results during idea generation:

 

Reverse things and statements: look at something in a mirror. Turn a mouth or nose upside down. Reverse a popular quote or phrase.

 

Merge things: Bring two different things, images, or objects together to make a new one.

 

Merge a tennis ball and a croissant. Merge a fish with a carrot.

 

Use a strange point of view or angle: View something from an unusual or unexpected angle.

 

Compare things: This could be pastimes or unlike objects, such as sox and cactus.

 

Devise a visual surprise: Create a visual that will make viewers do a double-take.

 

Personify things: Give inanimate objects human qualities.

 

 

Passion and Courage

A few more important ideas to think about on the journey you are about to embark on:

 

PASSION

COURAGE

 

What is it that you are passionate about?

 

What is it you feel inside that has to come out?

 

What is it that you have to say?

 

What is it (Passion) and Who is it for?

If you can identify that Passion then really have the courage of the conviction of that Passion to go forward. If you can start there, then your chances of succeeding are pretty good.

 

The next step is the tools. If you have an idea or thought that you can bring to fruition and fabricate. For example technology and technique may be part of that toolbox.

 

It might be a product or campaign. Whatever you have to bring to the world.