There are concepts, after which there are ideas— they could sound overly comparable, however they’re not one and the identical. Whereas concepts are the outcomes of a thought, ideas are the holy grail of the artistic world. They’re the rationale advert companies burn the midnight oil. They’re why designers push pixels. They’re what photographers are at all times seeking to seize. A finalized idea— in contrast to an unrealized concept— makes you go, “rattling, I want I considered that.”
In my senior yr of school on the College of Colorado Boulder, I took a Portfolio class designed to assist us bulk up our portfolios with ideas that might encourage interviewers to, you recognize, rent us. Whereas I had only a few expectations going into the course, its energy hinged on the concept vs. ideas principle. Our teacher Dan Ligon, Instructing Affiliate Professor on the college’s Promoting, Public Relations and Media Design division, was continuously coaxing us to push our preliminary concepts previous their perceived limits. Typically with only a easy, upset shake of his head, we knew we didn’t but have an idea; once we did have an idea, it felt like we’d cracked the code. Ligon’s idea approval meant every thing to us Portfolio college students, though getting there was fairly the uphill battle.
I’m just a few years out of school now, however what I discovered has caught with me a few years later, and it seems like Ligon remains to be getting loads of mileage out of it. Throughout a current scroll via my LinkedIn, I noticed that Ligon had given a chat on the seventeenth Worldwide Design Rules and Practices Convention on none apart from his analysis on concepts versus ideas. I used to be intrigued for a lot of causes: what did this analysis entail, and second: is there a quicker approach to give you an idea as a substitute of only a plain outdated concept?
I had the distinctive alternative to take a seat down with Ligon and talk about his analysis— insights I’d have liked to have in faculty. “I’m certain this is able to have been good to know years in the past, nevertheless it wasn’t till after working with all of you guys that we may actually begin understanding it,” he advised me. “So the large factor is: What’s an idea?”
All through our dialog, Ligon underlined that whereas he was attempting to show us the distinction between an concept and an idea, my fellow college students and I usually struggled to know as a result of he didn’t but know the right way to articulate it. He knew there was a distinction, however he solely found the right way to clarify the formulaic method round it after the actual fact.
“An idea is one thing extra than simply an concept: it’s an concept with an perception,” he continued. “The fascinating factor was I wanted this info once I was working with you guys: actually diving into what an perception is.”
Wanting again, it looks like our brainstorming course of was lacking one thing. Once we have been at school and Ligon would say, “Present me one thing I haven’t seen earlier than,” we couldn’t appear to get to the “eureka second” as a result of it felt extra like a guessing sport. However in his new findings, Ligon’s been capable of assist each college students and professionals perceive the system to get to the “huge concept” idea within the first place.
In response to his new analysis, “ideas soar out,” he stated. “Concepts with new, novel, or radical elements stand alone. They’re not simply purely subjective.”
He goes on to share the traditional story of Archimedes: when the mathematician was within the bathtub, he seen that the water stage within the tub rose as he acquired in and questioned if he may use this phenomenon to find out the amount of irregular objects. This led him to the invention of the precept of displacement, however his iconic “eureka second” comes from radically serious about issues in a unique gentle.
Ligon shared the transient he utilized in his presentation to showcase his analysis, which went one thing like this: “Provide you with an idea to promote a brick, however it could’t be used to construct a construction.” We then walked via concepts from analysis contributors that probably felt like ideas, like a pet tombstone or a tough hat tester. We decided that these concepts lacked perception as a result of higher choices exist, so why would you employ a brick when there’s already a probably good various?
Then we moved on to ideas from contributors, and Ligon defined why these concepts have been smarter and had an perception hooked up to them. These ideas included a “Worst Shooter Trophy” (a play on the basketball phrase “taking pictures bricks”) and a template for studying the right way to carve Egyptian hieroglyphs. These ideas adopted the transient: they contained an perception, and artistic administrators judging alongside Ligon’s framework unanimously chosen them as ideas, thus proving the purpose that they’re not subjective.
In a current Entrepreneur article, Stanford d.college professors Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn decided that a fantastic concept would happen with the ratio of 2000 prospects to 1 delivered answer.
“Stanford says you’ll develop one idea with each 2000 concepts, [but based on my research], it’s one idea to 1203,” Ligon stated. “So out of the 716 concepts, we had solely six ideas. Right here’s the place it acquired fascinating: as we normalized the outcome and eliminated the duplicated concepts inside our dataset, we solely had 2254 single, discrete concepts. And once we normalize it, that signifies that for each distinctive idea somebody comes up with, you in all probability want about 376 concepts [to get there].”
This quantity solidifies that ideas aren’t simple to give you and helps college students and creatives work in direction of a numerical aim, with the hope that one in no less than 376 concepts will likely be a successful idea.
“I’ve by no means had a quantity up to now; I’ve had artistic administrators say, “Carry me a bunch of drafts— what number of until I see one thing good?’” Ligon stated. “[Concepts are] not as uncommon and unusual as Stanford is arguing, however no less than one in 376 offers us one thing to work with.”
And why is that this analysis useful? “The analysis tells me ideas aren’t subjective,” Ligon concluded. When creatives give their concepts parameters and might give you concepts that match them, it’s less complicated to get to the idea part. “It’s not depending on who’s the professor, who’s the artistic director, or who’s the large factor,” he stated. “If it’s an idea, it’s an idea, and it jumps out off the web page.”
Should you’d prefer to be taught extra in regards to the analysis, the video under breaks down Ligon’s current discuss.
