Basic design idea exploration through action words

Once you’ve got your first design ideas brainstormed, you want to dive deeper into those that you think could become the winning result. But many designers run into a rut when they want to create variations of there initial ideas. I’ve found action words to be very useful in that phase of the design process. Here are some of mine:

Action words I use to explore design ideas

The following list is just the beginning. Use it until it is useful and abandon it the moment it isn’t anymore. Add words that trigger more ideas inside of you and get rid of those that are only a waste of time. As your experience grows, so does the effectiveness of your word list:

• Amplify: Make things bigger, smaller, brighter, darker. Go to the extreme with the specific details of your initial design idea.
• Hyperbole: Go to the extreme and then one step further. If you amplify, you still obey the limits, but with hyperbole, you consciously want to exceed them.
• Repetition: One of the most used characteristics of design ideas is repetition. Repeat elements of your designs or the design itself. Whatever leads to new ideas is allowed.
• Antithesis: Create the opposite of your idea or create contrast by putting opposites within your design next to each other.
• Omitting: Leave out certain elements. Get rid of the colours, get rid of shapes, get rid of words, letters, numbers, and anything else possible.
• Reversal: Mirror wordmarks, turn around specific letters, put your design on its head, reverse the order of the elements.
• Understatement: Use minimalism as a positive design philosophy. Or understate the design to find out what is essential to it and can’t be omitted.
• Metaphor: Find a metaphor, a symbol, an icon, a wordplay to spice things up.
• Placeholder: How about turning a letter into a number or vice versa. Maybe an icon placed within a wordmark works well…
• Contradiction: Contradict yourself with your design to create a strong contrast.
• Thicker/Thinner: Make everything thicker or thinner and see what happens.
• Combination: Combine two or more ideas into one. Take single elements of more than one idea and combine them to create a new one.
• Dissect: Dissect your design into its single elements. Take away what is unneeded. Add something that is missing.
• Multiply: How about multiplying specific elements within your design?
• Stretch/Flat: Stretch your design, flatten it, compress it.

As I’ve said, this list is just the beginning. The more you use it, the more you’ll find out which words can get your creative juice flowing. Keep these words and get rid of the rest to speed up your creative process.