Improving Our Creative Thinking, 5 Minutes at a Time
Codeword’s Little Ideas Festival reminded us that you don’t have to think big to get people thinking.
Last week, we held the first-ever Codeword Little Ideas Festival, a creative development workshop with a couple important wrinkles: Presenters got 5 minutes and 7 slides, and no big ideas allowed.
It was an afternoon of quick tips and small hacks that our creatives have developed over the years — things that might make someone’s day a little easier, or help them look at something from a slightly different angle.
When people think “creative,” it calls to mind moments of inspiration. Archimedes sitting in a tub. Jimmy Neutron experiencing a Brain Blast. That kind of thing. This leads to the assumption that in order to improve as a creative, you need to always rethink everything you know, and constantly reinvent yourself to come up with good ideas. Sounds exhausting, the way TED Talks could be exhausting.
The Codeword Little Ideas Festival was our way of elevating and celebrating the nitty-gritty of creative work. The real-life day-to-day stuff that leads to good work, good careers, and a good agency.
In total, we hosted 20 talks over the course of a couple hours, and some of them were too good to keep to ourselves. So here are a few slides from the Little Ideas Festival…
