Lost Swordfish Blog

Use the room you’re in as a visual inspiration canvas by finding references to print and put up on the walls, along with your rough concepts, sketches, headlines, and so on. Try some image searches for related ideas and save the ones you like as stimuli.

Read on

How could you combine two or more ideas, techniques, aspects, solutions, or problems? Try writing relevant keywords or ideas down on bits of paper then mashing them up randomly.

Read on

Go outside, to a bar for a few drinks, or to the top of a mountain and see how the change of environment changes your perspective. Many people find walking helpful for ideation and stimulus.

Read on

Create four quadrants and list Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. S&W relate to internal factors while O&T tend to relate to external aspects. SWOT analyses are usually used for strategic evaluation, but they can also be used to provoke new ideas.

Read on

Simply starting the thinking process with ‘What if?’ can elicit a creative response. Try saying it out loud or writing it down several times in a list to hack your brain to think differently. Build upon other ideas by challenging them with ‘what if’ scenarios.

Read on

Write your problem or starting point at one end and the ideal outcome at the other. Now fill in the gaps to map out what needs to happen to bring your objective into reality. What steps will need to occur? How might they influence each other?

Read on

This technique is often used to get to the root of a problem, but it can also discover insights that lead to innovative thinking. Start with a problem or solution, then keep asking ‘why?’ to see where it leads you.

Read on

The creative process is iterative, and by getting to the minimum it can open us up to pivot in relevant and interesting ways. What’s the minimum needed to achieve the objective? What’s the most efficient, quickest, and cheapest option you can think of?

Read on

Pretend you’ve already achieved success. What would the newspaper headline or article say? This will spur you to think of big, newsworthy ideas. Explaining how and why it worked so well forces you to consider the steps to success.

Read on

Consider the flow-on effects: what might the consequences of the problem or solution entail? What are the variables at play? How might the family of your target audience react? How could time, complications, or feedback loops have influence?

Read on