Lord of the Rings. Indiana Jones. Star Wars. All epics. All awesome. There’s something about a treacherous journey that reaches deep inside us. Perhaps we all feel life is an epic journey. Regardless of psychology and philosophy, journeys spark our imagination.
You can use this concept to make your creativity come alive. You can take your audience on an epic journey. Read more…
Want to make a lasting impact on someone? Disguise you’re creativity as something else. “What do you mean,” you ask?
Take this wonderful example of an unlikely disguise by Art Lebedev Studio. It’s packaging for a fragrance called Levelus. Can you figure out who this particular product is aimed at? Read more…
Now this song isn’t exactly new, but you have to admit it made an impact on some people. (I’m not a fan but I know many who are.) Read more…
Check out this business card that turns into an airplane. Norburn Model Aircraft Supply gives these out…perfect way to drive the point home about their product.
But even if the company weren’t a model aircraft supply company, I think anyone would be excited to receive a business card like this. The reason: it’s fun. It’s a game. The child-like heart never fully disappears in adults. We all like games from time to time.
So what can you do to turn your creativity into a game? Perhaps a business card that turns into a paper football? Make a crossword puzzle out of song lyrics? Encrypt your message into a scrambled word or use a code cypher for a part of your brochure? Make the audience to cheer each time you say a certain word? You can make almost anything into a game.
Image from Adsoftheworld
One of the most effective ways to get someone’s attention is through encouraging them to be bad. Because we’re told so often to color within the lines and obey the rules, encouragement to do something “bad” seems to grab our imagination. Check out this poster from the 2008 election that encourages people to “vandalize” it with their chewing gum.
GumElection.com created these posters as a creative solution for chewing gum blanketing New York streets. Rather than encouraging people to put their gum in trash-bins, they gave people an exciting alternative to throwing their gum on the streets.
How can you encourage people to behave badly to solve a problem or make your creative work more engaging?
Check out this great promotional bag from a company whose goal is to help you stop biting your nails. The traditional option to promo your product would be to put an ad in a magazine. But just think how much more effective this “ad” is–being touted around. You can imagine it gets a lot of attention.
What ordinary things can you make extraordinary?
Do you lose your keys in the sofa? Do you scream in fury while flinging cushions across the room in an attempt to find your remote control? Chill out! Embrace the problem.
A designer in Japan created a chair meant to hold all your valuables. Check out this armchair with endless crevices for holding anything you could possible want it to.
Some really cool creativity comes from the way we deal with problems. So next time you find yourself in an annoying situation, instead of trying to fix the problem, embrace it. Imagine what you could do to make the problem worse. It just might lead to some great creativity.
Images from: http://www.dezeen.com/2010/11/05/lost-in-sofa-by-daisuke-motogi-architecture/
Check out the room picture. Now look at it again. Probably thought it was a drawing, right? No…it’s an actual photo of a hotel room. This is the Comic room in the Arte Luise Kunsthotel, an art-themed hotel in Berlin, Germany. To create the illusion of a comic book they outlined the room corners in black.
Cool things happen when you start to think in terms of cartoons. What can you do to make your creative work more “cartoony”? Exaggerations? Artistic styles? Colors? Caricaturization?
