I'll start to throw away "noise" and try to distill a mood, an emotion, a direction. I'm starting to focus in on my visual definition to my challenge. When I think I've distilled the information to it's core essence I'll pull out my list of questions again and measure my "core" against that initial list of questions. Does it answer all the questions, or does it fall short in some ways? Do I need to fill in some information, or do I still have some refinement left to do? Take your time and walk all the way through your exploration phase. You are setting the armature in place, and a solid foundation will help you find success. It is at this point, as a creative director, that I will start fleshing out my creative brief. As an artist, it is usually the place that I start hunting up reference material. Sometimes I'll have picked up some relevant materials.
Materials in my exploration process, but often I've only gathered materials that help point me in the direction I want to go. Sometimes I have materials that show what I don't want (pointing towards that white space that needs to be filled) and I have to do further creative explorations to figure out how to fill that space. So as you can see, the research phase of creative development is just a single step on the creative journey. Do you have a creative exploration process that you'd like to share? Hints, tips and tricks for other creatives? Please share your thoughts or ideas in the comments below, or start a discussion in the ArtOrder community. Due to a delay in hand-offs. I am unable to post the challenge I planned on putting up today. Hopefully my editor will have good news for me today and I will be able to post the new challenge on Monday.