Unlock your creative block
Becky Reardon
Managing Director and Brand Strategy Lead at Embrace Marketing & Branding Agency based in Cheshire, South of Manchester
Do you struggle with creative blocks? All of us do from time to time. This blog focuses on what is creativity and proven tips to lift the creative block and open our minds to a different way of thinking.
What causes creative blocks?
Many things can cause us to have a creative block. Some of these might sound familiar:
- We think we aren’t creative
- We panic because we can’t think creatively quickly
- We don’t place ourselves in our audiences’ shoes
- We don’t open our minds to different sources of inspiration
- We don’t challenge ourselves or a brief
What is creativity?
It’s true that some people are naturally more creative than others. But we believe that everyone can be creative. Having an open mind is fundamental. In the words of Steve Jobs: “Creativity is just connecting things”. It’s about absorbing your experiences and information around you so that you can synthesise new ideas.
Here are our tried and tested hints and tips to produce more creative ideas
Deeply understand the objectives
Take your objective and explore it as deeply as possible. Be inquisitive. Do desk research and ask questions. Map out everything you know. What’s the background, objectives, purpose, current situation, messages to convey, required response, etc.
Do lots of extended research
It’s not just about understanding the task in hand, do research outside of this area. Research competitors and relevant organisations in your industry and see what they have to offer in terms of their visual identity and tone of voice. Go beyond your industry too. What new ideas can you gain? Creating a mood board helps bring different ideas together. Using this as inspiration, how can you synthesise these ideas to generate something new and distinctive.
Time limits make and break creativity
You want to set sufficient time to research and explore ideas, but not so much that you go too broad and can’t bring everything together. When you get to the ideas generation phase we’d recommend setting a tight time limit of an hour say to generate as many ideas as possible. Then go away, take a day to forget about the project. This gives us time to think subconsciously in a relaxed manner. When you return with a fresh take, you’ll either add lots of new ideas or know exactly how to refine your ideas towards completion.
We hope you found this blog useful and have some fresh ideas on how you can be more creative and lift your creative blocks.
Contact [email protected] for more information and ideas on your design and brand objectives or challenges.