In this exercise I experimented with using pictures, rather than words, to generate ideas. I did this exercise twice because I felt that I learnt a lot about how I could approach this task (i.e. how not to do it) the first time I tried it and wanted to test whether a different approach might work better.
The first word that I chose to brainstorm was ‘wild’. I found that focussing on what my pictures ‘should’ look like was hindering me from developing new ideas quickly. I also found that trying to use different colours and media was interrupting my flow of ideas. Based on this experience I decided to take a different approach with a different word. With the second word I decided to work quickly using black pen for as long as I could rapidly generate new images, and only then to add colour. I decided not to worry how pictures looked and not to allow myself to google, or look anything up. I also decided to put pictures that form natural groups together on the page.
The second word that I chose to brainstorm was ‘kitchen’. Admittedly, ‘kitchen’ is probably an easier word to brainstorm because it is less abstract than ‘wild’. I felt that starting by working solely in black pen helped me to generate ideas quickly. Grouping words together made it easier to come back to different topics as new ideas appeared in my mind. Oddly, I also found that standing up when I got stuck, almost instantly generated new ideas.
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