When the ideas flow, concepting is fun. When they don’t, I grind away over award books, archives, and stock photo sites producing page after page of tedious, trite, irrelevant, stupid ideas. Yes, I may be laying the groundwork for later brilliance. Or not. That’s why, when the deadline looms, it pays to have a few different approaches to concept...
An ad concept does not exist to win awards, or to set trends, or to break rules. It exists to solve a problem. That’s the challenge of commercial creativity. The glory part is that if you solve the problem in an unexpected way, you sometimes achieve those other objectives too. But, you have to solve the problem. And, to...
As promised yesterday, here are a few more places I often visit for inspiration. Simon’s Skip: Advert and Brochure Archive. Simon Moses graduated from the University of Brighton (UK) with a degree in Design History. His personal website houses a small collection of British ads and brochures for household appliances, mostly from the 1960s but extending into the 1970s....
When I get tired of leafing through current award books, it’s often more productive to reach deeper into the past for ideas to steal inspiration. That said, here are some classic advertising and design archives. Key things to think about as you browse the archives are: • the graphic history of iconic brands • the evolution of the relationship...
