A WORD

ON DEVELOPING AND

UNDERSTANDING IDEAS

The ten approaches in the last part should be enough to inject

some variety into most ideas sessions.

But it is possible that you could try all of them on

a particularly thorny brief and still not come up with

a direction you are happy with.

So here are five more, followed by some techniques to help you

understand how the mind comes up with and reveals ideas. Some

are a bit more esoteric – deliberately so, since an obscure angle

could be precisely what is needed to unlock the problem.

The mind works best when it is relaxed. Understanding

how this works can remove the panic that often sets

in during the ‘stumped’ phase. You can then work

out how to nurture young ideas sensitively, and begin

elements of the editing process that we will investigate

more thoroughly in Part Four.