John Francis - Reading #2

In this week’s reading of Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming, the brainstorming techniques mentioned in the chapters were engaging along with the images. Before, reading the pages I kept on thinking to myself how the book would continue because I did not think there would be really any more brainstorming techniques, but I was surprisingly wrong because there are tons of brainstorming techniques. I just have not heard of them all.

One technique that I thought would be interesting to try out would be the idea of forced connections. While I do not necessarily know if I would ever make a design off of forced connections in any of my future jobs, I think it would be fun and interesting to try out because it makes your mind think in a different way. I really loved the example of Agitate + Percolate because not only did the design stand out, but also the idea of it. Next, I really liked the idea behind multipurpose tools and visuals puns. Again, it is a different way of looking at something and it’s fun. For visual puns, the example of the Disney castle (or what looked like it) and a missile coming out from it was very intriguing because the designer took something very innocent and turned it into something very murderous.

Last but not least, seeing the section on visual diary brought me back in time and how much I miss sketching daily in a book. This is something that I am very interested in starting up again because it was just so fun to doodle. I just hope that I can make the time to sketch daily. I do not think fifteen minutes will be too much to ask for, but if it is I will try to sketch ten minutes per day. Now, all I need is another sketchbook.