How to get ideas using references – design tips

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How do you generate ideas for your design projects? How do you turn references into original ideas? In this video, Creative Director Tom Crate explains his 5-step process for creating high-quality design concepts for clients like Nike, Jaguar, and Microsoft.

0:00 – Introduction
0:55 – Where do creative ideas come from?
1:48 – Five-step process for generating ideas
3:08 – Let’s put this process into practice – generating concepts
4:09 – How to use Pinterest to discover creative ideas
5:40 – Analyzing an image reference and its meaning
6:55 – Curating and organizing references in ideas
8:44 – A sample project. From mood boards to the final project
10:18 – Get into the habit of collecting and preparing references

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Summary provided by Gabriel Cameron:

1) Understand the brief. Who is it for? What is it intended to achieve? How should it make people feel? Summarize the project in a few key words that capture the essence.

2) Stop thinking. Clear your mind and make room for inspiration. This is an important step to distance yourself from initial, hasty solutions and let your creativity flow.

3) Explore. Let these keywords and emotions guide your search for inspirational references. Explore all sorts of art forms – if you're designing a movement project, don't limit your search to movement projects – get inspiration from dance, photography, typography, etc. When you undoubtedly get inspired, take quick notes to capture the ideas, but don't get distracted from developing those concepts just yet. Think about headphones and a playlist to help you focus and get in the right mood.

4) Organize. After you've collected references, organize them into common visual themes and patterns. Pinterest is a great tool for exploring, collecting, and organizing references into boards and even subcategories within a board.

5) Solidify. Write a striking headline and a few short sentences describing the themes of the various collections you've curated and how those themes can be creatively implemented to convey key concepts. Write clearly and simply, keep it short. Google Slides works well as an easy tool for capturing your ideas and allows you to show motion (animated GIFs) alongside still images.

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