Become a concept firehose

New ideas don't just appear. They are the result of conscious, or subconscious, connections being made by the creator. Someone took two or more disparate ideas and combined them to get an unexpected result. Concept artists use this strategy all the time. Need a cute dragon? Combine a dragon with something soft and fuzzy, maybe a peach or a puppy, and start illustrating. 

There are tons of ways to begin this creative matchmaking process and I've made my a document to help you get started. Your idea will probably take on a life of its once the ideas start flowing but you're just looking for something to get the creative juices flowing. It's all about placing constraints upon your ideation and observing how each decision leads to powerful combinations.

Here's how it works: Write down the thing thing your designing (character, logo, UI, etc) then list the requirements of your project. What do you know about it already? Once these are listed move left to right through the document, listing as many items as you can for each column. Don't hold back ideas, go for volume. Once you have a long list make a selection in each column and draft a project description based on your selections. 

Does this seem too dry to work? Aren't spreadsheets anathema to the creative process? Nonsense. This exercise is just putting onscreen, or on paper, whats already going through someone's head when they're doing concept development.  

Remember, this is an idea generation tool. Try to make unexpected combinations! It doesn't try to answer all the questions about a project, its function is to make connections that produce unexpected results. It's a conversation starter and once you've output a project description you might try the exercise a second or third time to see how much the concept can change just by tweaking a couple variables.

I've created some examples in the document to demonstrate how the process works. The highlighted cells are decisions I made and all of these are combined into a statement describing the project. In the columns Adjectives, Additional Descriptors and Setting columns you'll discover interest results can be produced by selecting multiple options but don't go overboard. You'll see that selected more than three options actually starts to hinder the concept. Few creative constraints often produce the clearer ideas.

Get six-pack abs through effective feature tracking

That's right, a good feature tracking tool will help you get the abs you've always wanted. How? With all the time you'll save you can easily squeeze in five minutes to work your core. I'm only half kidding. Imagine, if running a tighter, more organized, project wins you back 10-30 minutes per day what would you do with that time?

Continuing my efforts to make free and easy to use project management tools available to you I've just uploaded a simple feature tracking sheet to the resources page. According to my Google search a feature is "a distinctive attribute or aspect of something." For our purposes features are the individual components of a larger project. For example: if you're building a theater show you might start breaking down features by category: story, script, costumes, lighting, set, etc. Each of those represent some component of the larger whole.

There are tons of great tools out there for tracking features within a project (Agile, Kanban, Trello, Pivotal Tracker, etc) but I wanted something simple with little friction between my ideas and decisions so I made this tracking sheet. It's good for quick planning alongside other tools like those listed above. For smaller projects this worksheet might be all you need but for larger projects with multiple collaborators you could use this to sketch your project then migrate your features to something like Trello.

The Priority column is a drop down menu with three values: 1 (this feature needs to happen), 2 (it would be great if this feature happened) and 3 (life will go on if this feature doesn't happen). Feel free to modify this document to suit your needs: add new columns, copy and paste to extend the existing columns, etc.

Feel free to contact me with any questions!

www.tools-not-rules.com

It's Free! Creative brief and Project Tracking Sheet

Over the past couple years I've been writing about things to help us get more from our creative pursuits. I know we're all different and not every tool works for everyone equally - we all have unique skills, levels of experience, world views, aesthetics tastes, etc. - but I hope you'll find some nugget here that's useful to you. Recently I've started creating some downloadable resources and you can get them here for free. Suspicious? Don't be. This is a no-strings arrangement. I'm not collecting your data and doing anything strange. It just feels good to give back to the community of makers who have taught me so much. 

There are tools in the works for feature tracking, conducting brainstorms and more so stay tuned. If there's something specific you'd like to have, or see, you can always drop me an email. I'm not charging for any of these but if you're feeling thankful you can always make a donation (in the sidebar to the right) to support the creation of new tools. Thanks!

The Creative Brief

My version of a project brief that comes loaded with specific questions for each category (description, goals, etc). It's great for fleshing out your vision, driving conversation with your collaborators and focusing your projects. It's an editable Word file so you can customize it to your needs. Get the creative brief.

Project Tracking

The second file I'm making available is a simple Project Tracking spreadsheet. When you have multiple projects on your plate and you're trying to prioritize where to begin and identify issues related to each project this is a pretty solid tool. Will it answer all of your questions related to each project? No. But this Excel file will give you enough insight into your projects that you can prioritize and get started. And it's free.

As always, got a question? Feel free to contact me.

www.tools-not-rules.com