Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

(July 2008) posted on Tue Jul 01, 2008

Tools to use when that next great idea is struggling to emerge.

By Christian Davies

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Over all my years in this business, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some stellar groups of designers, whose spirit seemed to flow directly into the work they produced. Teams like these are fun to be a part of and to watch.

To observe them, though, you’ll need to find them, and their habitats are diverse and strange. At times, you’ll see them huddled around a single monitor, at other times sprawled all over the floor. They co-opt ping-pong tables, coffee bars and hotel lobbies. A city street becomes a war room, an airplane becomes a studio.

What emerge are ideas – tons of them, free-flowing, thick and fast. But, this being a creative process, sometimes you’ll sense a struggle. Sometimes, even the greatest teams just run out of gas. And, through working in these teams, I’ve seen how they deal with inertia and what they use to fill up the tank.

There are no secrets here, just the adopted practices of many worthy teams. But they are the things I always go back to on those days when the muse won’t pick up the phone.

Start with the brief. There are people I know who are big believers that creativity should be unfettered, like a design version of Thing One and Thing Two from “The Cat in the Hat.” Let out of their box, they run amok, free at last (and, need I remind everyone, smashing everything they come into contact with).

I don’t believe creativity should be unfettered. I believe it needs purpose. For me, that purpose is the brief. It’s the first step on the long and winding path to a great solution. It’s the beginning of the inspiration. When we’re stuck, we need to re-read the brief, remembering what the mission is, and then we need to read it again.

Become the end user. The process should always lead right to this: trying to think how the consumers think, to shop how they shop, to desire what they desire. It’s trying to get to the bottom of what inspires them to pick something off the shelf. As an old boss of mine used to say, it’s “uncovering their buy-ological urge.”