Brainstorming techniques: how to generate visual ideas

Method of Word Association

Start with a short sentence related to the theme. For instance, the general theme is restraint.
You may write: “Afraid of going beyond boundaries”. Or: “Economy of means”.

Alternatively, you may use the web to find a quote with the word in it. Example: “Liberty has
restraints but no frontiers”, Lloyd George. (source of the quote:
http://www.quotationspage.com) to help sort the many uses and nuances of the term.

Associate freely: under each word of the sentence list words that come to you mind, the
essence of the free association method is that ANY association is valid, do not judge or evaluate
anything as irrelevant, bad (or good), absurd, et cetera. In fact, there is no “wrong” association,
and the essence of the method is to bypass our “ordinary” way of considering things from a
“logical”(correct / incorrect) or “axiological” (good / bad) point of view. Do not restrain the flow
of words.

The result will be a number of columns in the page. The last step is to read the columns and
cross associate freely: the new associations between words from different columns will
generate images or visual metaphors related to the theme.

1. Create An Inspiration File

This is one of the most common brainstorm techniques for most artists, and if you aren’t
already doing this you should. It’s easy to do and even easier to maintain. All you need to start
is some place to keep images that inspire you.

It can be a moleskin sketch book, an accordion file or a file on your computer. Every time you
find something that inspires you or intrigues you throw it in your inspiration file.

When you’re getting ready to brainstorm new ideas, pull out your artistic inspiration file and go
to town. Reorganize it based on different criteria, such as color, or content or style.

Look for ideas in how these images fall together. Pick one image and make up a story about it.
What happens next? Paint or draw the next part of the story.

2. Draw The Dictionary

A dictionary isn’t just a tool for a writer. It’s a wonderful brainstorm tool for anyone.

After all, it contains every word in the English language, so you won’t find a broader source of
inspiration.
Flip to a random page and pick a random word. Repeat. Repeat again.

Eventually, you’ll start building a list of random words. Do any of them naturally fit together?
Do they draw create an image in your mind? What do they have in common?

3. Forced Association

In a way, forced association is related to an activity for which you might use your inspiration
file.

To start you’ll need a couple of different categories of content. It could be images, words or a
combination of the two. To create these categories, you can base them on your subject matter,
your medium, the emotion you want to convey, etc.

Now, select one image or word from each of your categories and force a connection between
them. How are they related or similar? If you combine them, what do they make? The strength
of the relationship isn’t important. It’s more important to find some sort of connection.

In no time, you’ll find a pair that seems to be a natural fit and sends your creative energy in
some new and unique direction.

4. Stream Of Consciousness Writing

Another writing exercise? Absolutely. Once again, this is a time-tested method of finding a
unique creative concept.

Start with one simple question. What do you want to create? A still life. A sculpture of a man
playing the bagpipes.

A sweater embroidered with a likeness of Elvis. Whatever strikes your fancy. Next, give yourself
a time limit that’s at least 5 minutes long.

Now write. Will it be fat Elvis or thin Elvis? What kind of jumpsuit is he wearing? What’s he got
in his hands? A microphone and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.

When the time expires, put your pen down and create what you’ve just written about.

5. Meditation / Do Something else

As the old saying goes, “A watched pot never boils,” so stop waiting for inspiration to strike.

Your brain is a marvelous multi-tasking machine, so go do something else. Ideally, you should
pick something monotonous like mowing the lawn or washing the dishes.

Once your mind starts to wander, you’ll be surprised how quickly it will start generating ideas.
The trick is to record them as soon as they pop up, so you don’t forget them.

25 Useful Brainstorming Techniques

 Time Travel. How would you deal with this if you were in a different time period? 10
years ago? 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago? 10,000 years ago? How about in the future?
10 years later? 100 years later? 1,000 years later? 10,000 years later?
 Teleportation: What if you were facing this problem in a different place? Different
country? Different geographic region? Different universe? Different plane of existence?
How would you handle it?
 Attribute change. How would you think about this if you were a different gender? Age?
Race? Intellect? Height? Weight? Nationality? Your Sanity? With each attribute change,
you become exposed to a new spectrum of thinking you were subconsciously closed off
from.
 Rolestorming. What would you do if you were someone else? Your parent? Your
teacher? Your manager? Your partner? Your best friend? Your enemy? Etc?
 Iconic Figures. This is a spinoff of rolestorming. What if you were an iconic figure of the
past? Buddha? Jesus? Krishna? Albert Einstein? Thomas Edison? Mother Theresa?
Princess Diana? Winston Churchill? Adolf Hitler? How about the present? Barack
Obama? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Steven Spielberg? Etc? How would you
think about your situation?
 Superpowers. This is another spinoff of rolestorming. What if you suddenly have
superpowers? Superman? Spiderman? Wonderwoman? X-Men? The Hulk? One of the
Fantastic Four? What would you do?
 Gap Filling. Identify your current spot – Point A – and your end goal – Point B. What is
the gap that exists between A and B? What are all the things you need to fill up this gap?
List them down and find out what it takes to get them.
 Group Ideation. Have a group brainstorming session! Get a group of people and start
ideating together. More brains are better than one! Let the creative juices flow
together!
 Mind Map. Great tool to work out as many ideas as you can in hierarchical tree and
cluster format. Start off with your goal in the center, branch out into the major sub-
topics, continue to branch out into as many sub-sub-topics as needed. Source Forge is a
great open-source mindmapping software that I use and highly recommend.
 Medici Effect. Medici Effect refers to how ideas in seemingly unrelated topics/fields
intersect. Put your goal alongside similar goals in different areas/contexts and identify
parallel themes/solutions. For example, if your goal is to be an award winning artist,
look at award winning musicians, educators, game developers, computer makers,
 businessmen, etc. Are there any commonalities that lie among all of them that you can
apply to your situation? What worked for each of them that you can adopt?
 SWOT Analysis. Do a SWOT of your situation – What are the Strengths? Weaknesses?
Opportunities? Threats? The analysis will open you up to ideas you may not be aware
before.
 Brain Writing. Get a group of people and have them write their ideas on their own sheet
of paper. After 10 minutes, rotate the sheets to different people and build off what the
others wrote on their paper. Continue until everyone has written on everyone else’s
sheet.
 Trigger Method. Brainstorm on as many ideas as possible. Then select the best ones and
brainstorm on those ideas as ‘triggers’ for more ideas. Repeat until you find the best
solution.
 Variable Brainstorming. First, identify the variable in the end outcome you look to
achieve. For example, if your goal is to achieve X visitors to your website, the variable is
# of visitors. Second, list down all the possibilities for that variable. Different variations
of visitors are gender/age/race/nationality/occupation/interests/etc. Think about the
question with each different variable. For example, for Genre: How can you get more
females to your website? How can you get more males to your website? For age: How
can you get more teenagers to your website? How can you get more adults to your
website? And so on.
 Niche. This is the next level of variable brainstorming method. From the variations of
the variable you have listed, mix and match them in different ways and brainstorm
against those niches. For example, using the example in #14, how can you get more
male teenagers to your website? (Gender & Age) How can you get more American
female adults to your website? (Nationality, Gender & Age)
 Challenger. List down all the assumptions in your situation and challenge them. For
example, your goal is to brainstorm on a list of ideas for your romance novel which you
want to get published. There are several assumptions you are operating in here. #1:
Genre to write: Romance. Why must it be that romance? Can it be a different genre?
Another assumption is for a novel. #2: Length of the story: Novel. Why must it be a
novel? Can it be a short story? A series of books? #3: Medium: Book. Why must be it a
book? Can it be an ebook? Mp3? Video? And so on.
 Escape Thinking. This is a variation of Challenger method. Look at the assumptions
behind the goal you are trying to achieve, then flip that assumption around and look at
your goal from that new angle. For example, you want to earn more income from selling
books. Your assumption may be ‘People buy books for themselves’. Flip the assumption
around such that ‘People do NOT buy books for reading’. What will this lead to? You
may end up with people buy books as gifts, for collection purposes, etc. Another
 assumption may be ‘People read books’. The flip side of this assumption may be people
look at books (drawings). Escaping from these assumptions will bring you to a different
realm of thought on how to achieve your goal.
 Reverse Thinking. Think about what everyone will typically do in your situation. Then do
the opposite.
 Counteraction Busting. What counteracting forces are you facing in your scenario? For
example, if you want to increase traffic to your website, two counteracting forces may
be the number of ads you put and the pageviews of your site. The more ads you put, the
more users will likely be annoyed and surf away. What can you do such that the
counteraction no longer exists or the counteraction is no longer an issue? Some
solutions may be 1) Get ads that are closely related to the theme of your site 2) Get
contextual ads that are part of your content rather than separate, and so on.
 Resource Availability. What if money, time, people, supplies are not issues at all? What
if you can ask for whatever you want and have it happen? What will you do?
 Drivers Analysis. What are the forces that help drive you forward in your situation?
What are the forces that are acting against you? Think about how you can magnify the
former and reduce/eliminate the latter.
 Exaggeration. Exaggerate your goal and see how you will deal with it now. Enlarge it:
What if it is 10 times its current size? 100 times? 1000 times? Shrink it: What if it is 1/10
its current size? 1/100? 1/1000? Multiply it: What if you have 10 of these goals now?
100? 1000?
 Get Random Input. Get a random stimuli and try to see how you can fit it into your
situation. Get a random word/image from a
dictionary/webpage/book/magazine/newspaper/TV/etc, a random object from your
room/house/workplace/neighborhood/etc and so on.
 Meditation. Focus on your key question such as ‘How can I solve XX problem?’ or ‘How
can I achieve XX goal?’ and meditate on it in a quiet place. Have a pen and paper in front
of you so you can write immediately whatever comes to mind. Do this for 30 minutes or
as long as it takes.
 Write a list of 101 ideas. Open your word processor and write a laundry list of at least
101 ideas to deal with your situation. Go wild and write whatever you can think of
without restricting yourself. Do not stop until you have at least 101.