How to Come up With Ideas Using References – Design Tips

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How do you generate ideas for your design projects? How do you turn references into original ideas? In this video, Creative Director, Tom Crate, shares his 5-step process for creating high-end design concepts for clients like Nike, Jaguar, and Microsoft.

0:00 – Intro
0:55 – Where do Creative Ideas Come From?
1:48 – Five-Step Process for Generating ideas
3:08 – Let's put this Process into Practice – Generating Concepts
4:09 – How to use Pinterest to Explore Creative Ideas
5:40 – Breaking down an Image Reference and it's Meaning
6:55 – Curating and Organizing References Into Ideas
8:44 – An Example Project. From Moodboards to Final Project
10:18 – Get into the Habit of Collecting and Curating References

Links:

Recap provided by Gabriel Cameron:

1) Understand the brief. Who’s it for? What should it do? How should it make people feel? Summarize the project into a few keywords that capture the essence.

2) Stop thinking. Clear your mind, make space for inspiration. This is an important step to distance yourself from initial knee-jerk solutions and allow yourself to fully and freely explore your creativity.

3) Explore. Allow those keywords and emotions to guide your journey of curating inspirational references. Explore far and wide, all art forms—if you’re designing a motion project don’t narrow your search to motion projects—take inspiration from dance, photography, typography, etc. As inspiration undoubtedly strikes, jot down quick notes capturing the ideas, but don’t get sidetracked creating those concepts, yet. Consider: headphones and a playlist to help you focus in and get in the zone.

4) Organize. After gathering references, organize them into common visual themes and patterns. Pinterest is a great tool for exploring, gathering, and organizing references into boards and even subcategories within a board.

5) Solidify. Write an evocative headline and some brief sentences that describe the themes of the various collections you’ve curated and how those themes may be executed creatively to communicate key concepts. Write with clarity and simplicity, keep it short. Google Slides works well as a simple tool to capture your ideas and allows you to display motion (animated gifs) alongside still images.

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#TheFutur #1BminusOne #DesignProcess #MotionDesign

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Host– Chris Do
Content Director– Matthew Encina
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I can't believe I get to watch these videos for free, so high quality!

kayaeki
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The hard part about any strategy is not knowing the strategy itself, but using it in the workflow.

chats-bug
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That was a treat! Straight to the point, easy to digest, and super practical. Thank you so much Tom for sharing your knowledge! I hope to see you more in here.

reemab
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I wonder what kind of keyword that Tom used when searching for references, like all of his image reference is so beautifully curated. Is it the eye of the experts that makes difference?

nindatika
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this is what i was looking for... Coming up with ideas was a struggle. But now its easy !!!
Thank you Futur 💙

Harshalonthetrack
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Thanks Tom, I loved this video. It really takes the abstract concept of ideation and makes it practical and repeatable. It's very close to my current process. I will be paying closer attention to these 5 steps on my next project.

micahhansen
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Ohhh boy. That's gonna help me a lot. Thank you so much TFA to bring him and give us so many information. Thanks again ♥️♥️♥️♥️

rahatistiak
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This just might be one of my favourite videos on youtube. Thank you so so much for sharing!

tiaalex
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Very informative and insightful. I'm a novelist and my protagonist is a young graphic designer with her first serious assignment. I learned a lot of what she is going or must go through. Great stuff!

zqzuruk
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Thank you all so much for sharing this. There's so much to learn. There's so much to try. I can't wait!

JohnBaronian
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This is content I like - short, informative and straight to the point.

n.a.
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Very useful. I would like to see deeper dive in this process. There is many of us right now who have a struggle coming up with the original ideas.

FObbO
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just written all these incredible tips to start working ... can't thank you enough

imanenacib
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This is what I was looking for to define my creative work process, Thanks lot for sharing

Artistosi
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Thank you so much!! I already use the 3-step process on one of the Futur vids by Matthew Encina(I just don't remember the exact title!), but this is also another lovely way to make ideas! I'm currently a HumSS student, which means we write a TON of articles and literary works. I design for fun and am a visual learner, so I think this 5-step process will help in visualizing my ideas, then applying those in writing.

nelaepowt
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Thank you Matt and Tom. Very cool «wrap up» of the method. Very nice! It helps me also solidifying my ideas! Thank you guys, indeed!

mguerra
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I love watching your videos, I always learn something.
This was very educative and refreshing. Keep up the good work!

favouroyende
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Amazing. This is amazing. Would love to see how the ideation process turns into the creation process.

DesignDrawDo
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I was searching this so long thank you

shalinitanti
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Wonderful and a minimal process! Thank you!

sidathramesh