Summer 10 - Idea generation

Idea generation is often one of my favourite stages, in the whole process of taking a brief to an outcome.  There are nearly always so many different possibilities, some of which more feasible than others. We were to fill an A1 sheet with as many ideas as possible, one thing that I am already improving on is trying to keep my ideas visual. Which means trying to instead of just write my options, actually use drawings and pictures instead. Often I can get carried away with writing far too much, and not attempting to use enough drawing at the same time and in the same way as I tend to use my writing to describe an idea, and how it might work. Already I feel that this is improving me, and my ideas, as it begins the whole process of exploring and experimenting of how to achieve my image and outcomes sooner. 

We reviewed our ideas this time in small groups, where we could pitch them to each other and bounce some feedback around. I actually found this to be rather helpful, as you could take on board advice given to others pitching their ideas. I still wasn't very decided as to which idea I would take forward, but after I had talked through all of them it helped me become a lot more clear in my mind as to which ideas would be a little too complex to realise, and those that didn't quite have enough substance to them. I managed to condense myself down to two ideas that I believed had the most potential to be a success. Firstly my Jars idea, which involved drawing out ten jars of things I had tried for the first time this summer. Group feedback was that this could be quite charming if it was all kept simple enough, as the jars looked good together, just on their own. My second favourite idea came from the tenth title of image we were asked to create, which was, 'something scary', and for me that was my horse falling, and injuring his back. To help him recover I had a series of physiotherapy exercises, and some more general things that I could do to help him heal. So this second idea is ten ways to look after a horse, or more specifically, Dermot, my horse. This idea received encouraging feedback too, it would be quite practically achievable. I wasn't sure if this idea would work at first, as some of things would be quite tricky to portray, but through having sketched out my ideas instead of having just written in the first place let me see that there was potential there, and the group backed me up on this. These would both be exciting ideas to work with as they are both things I'd be very interested to draw in look further into.