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Last Updated on June 6, 2026

Let's start from the Beginning

How do we come up with ideas and turn them into something we can actually communicate?

The five methods below are a toolkit, not a recipe. Move through them in order, or find your own way in.

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Treatment + Mood Board

A treatment and a mood board are your two main deliverables. The exercises below help you build both.

Treatment

Create structure

Describe the narrative of your visual story as briefly and clearly as possible. A good treatment helps you test whether your idea holds up — and makes it easier to explain to others.

Moodboard

Find inspiration

Collect existing images that resonate with you: other designers' work, photographs, video screenshots, anything. Mood boards aren't about having good taste — they're about knowing what you're drawn to.

No idea yet? Pick 3 words that pull at you:

Growth, justice, community, knowledge, morality, conflict, empathy, culture, technology, progress, sustainability, imagination, equality, consciousness, purpose

Method 1 | Interior monologue writing

Embrace Your Creative Flow

Assignment

Write freely for 10 minutes. No filter, no structure, no right or wrong. This is just for you — don’t share it.

  1. Write or speak about your topic without stopping.
  2. Use whatever medium feels natural: pen, keyboard, voice recorder.
  3. Ignore spelling, grammar, language. Write how you think.

Method 2 | Corpus Construction

Find your Guide Words

Assignment

Go back through what you wrote and pull out words that feel alive. Build a list, then push it further.

  1. Highlight words that catch your attention.
  2. Add synonyms, then metaphors, then antonyms.
  3. Let the list surprise you.

Method 3 | Mind Map or Visual Recording

Reorder and find connections

Assignment

Put your main word in the center and let it branch. Sketches work just as well as diagrams, messiness is fine here.

  1. Branch out to related words, then to their opposites.
  2. Use color, symbols, rough drawings.
  3. Don’t tidy it up too soon.

Method 4 | Mood Board

Find Visual References

Assignment

Start with a visual search and collect images that resonate with you, not just literally, but emotionally. Choose images that reflect your word list, or not. Collect more than you need.

  1. Look online, in books, in screenshots.
  2. Arrange them in a way that reveals something: by mood, by contrast, by feeling.

Method 5 | Restrictions

Set your rules

Assignment

Now that you have a direction, define what your project is and what it isn’t. A good constraint is a creative decision, not a limitation.

  1. Write a short do’s and don’ts list.
  2. What would make this project lose itself? What would keep it honest?
  3. Revisit and revise this list as the project develops.