Most brainstorming techniques involve the
interaction of a group of participants. These techniques, and there are many of
them, are used by businesses and organizations to solve problems more quickly. Unfortunately,
as illustrators, we mostly work alone, so group brainstorming activities aren’t
much use to us. However, there are some group techniques where the underlying
principle can be adapted for individual brainstorming. Fortune telling
prediction is one of them.
Brainstorming Techniques
Fortune Telling Prediction
Not normally recommended in the illustration
business, fortune telling is a great way to divorce yourself from your own bag
of tricks and old habits when it comes to problem solving. Fortune telling is
to make a prediction; to declare or indicate in advance; to foretell on the
basis of observation, experience, or conjecture. In the business, it generally
isn’t a good thing for an illustrator to approach an assignment by trying to predict
what a client would want. This approach can end up badly. Believe it or
not, clients generally don’t have the best ideas, in fact most of them don’t
even like their own ideas, not to mention the fact that they aren’t
illustrators, and don’t know what would work best pictorially. So it’s best to
stay out of the client’s head. In fact that’s the only rule about brainstorming
by fortune telling.
This brainstorming method works the same way as
a fortuneteller does. It is an effective, entertaining, and fun way to generate
ideas. It requires the fortuneteller, aka, illustrator, to try to identify
thoughts in whomever they are attempting to “read”. The group version of this
brainstorming technique involves using other people to come up with thoughts.
This interpretation uses only other people’s personas. So instead of asking
another person about a particular problem directly, you suppose how they might
answer.
Continuing on in the same manner as the
examples in Brainstorming For Illustrators: 1, 2, and 3, the example assignment
is to create an illustrated icon for the subject of brainstorming. More
specifically, the fortuneteller, aka, me, the illustrator, will try to suppose
what different people think of, when addressing the subject of brainstorming. For
this method, it is possible to choose anyone, famous or historical person,
family member, classmate, or acquaintance to use as a subject. Below are some
selections and supposed responses. Whether they are realistic accurate
predictions of what these people would say is inconsequential. However they
have provided inspiration for ideas that can be used to visualize an image for
brainstorming, and they were generated in an unorthodox manner that
conventional conjecture could not achieve.
Oscar Wilde – “What makes an artist think
they are an artist.”
Winston Churchill -- “A link in a chain of destiny.”
Hilary Clinton – “Globetrotting by way of
imagination.”
Jonas Salk – “Germinating an idea.”
Steve Jobs – “A thought tsunami.”
Kathy Griffin – “A twisted sense of humor.”
Moe Howard – “Being hit by a ton of bricks.”
Chuck Yeager – “To soar among the clouds.”
Chuck Yeager – “To soar among the clouds.”
Groucho Marx – “For a serious thinker,
someone other than me.”
Harpo Marx – “Honk, honk, honk.”
Rudolph Nureyev – “Leaping freely in mid air.”
Policeman – “Walking down any street and
you’ll get lots of ideas.”
Cabbie – “Lane weaving to get ahead
quickly.”
John Dillinger -- “A blackjack and some brass
knuckles makes for some thinkin’.”
Below are a few thumbnail sketches inspired fortune telling brainstorming.
Below are a few thumbnail sketches inspired fortune telling brainstorming.
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| Marx & Churchill. © 2013 Don Arday. |
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| Nureyev & Yeager. © 2013 Don Arday. |
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| Clinton & Cabbie. © 2013 Don Arday. |
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| Dillinger & Griffin. © 2013 Don Arday. |
Illustrators sometimes become very self-conscious about presenting outlandish concepts, especially for business types of problems, but clients are always looking for unusual ideas. The idea of combining Edvard Munch’s The Scream with John Dillinger and Kathy Griffin is about as peculiar as it gets, but finding a conceptual way to make a clients message stand out should always be in the mind of an illustrator. Fortune telling can provide that unusual idea, and clients don’t care how am idea comes about. Metaphorically speaking, they are less interested in how a clock works then how to tell the time.
