The Thing About Great Ideas
While much of RGD’s DesignThinkers 2016 conference necessarily focused on the visual, there were also integral moments on communication and conceptualization. That’s where Mark Higgins stepped in, to moderate a panel on one of our particular areas of interest: “Where Do Great Ideas Come From?” Panelists Erik Kessels, Leland Maschmeyer, Fredrik Öst, and Erik Kockum drew a full crowd, and the 45-minute session offered a fitting combination of humour and serious thought, with a solid dash of imperfection and spectacle thrown in.*
Higgins opened the discussion with the necessary question, “What is a great idea?” The answers were intriguing in their range and focus, because that question and their follow-ups drew back the performative curtain and gave us real insight into how some of the most successful creative minds work.
The Gardens

Erik Kessels: Dutch artist, designer and curator with a great interest in photography. Erik co-founded Amsterdam-based communications agency KesslesKramer in 1996, where he works for national and international clients. www.kesselskramer.com
For Kessels, working towards a great idea is the process of moving from back garden to front garden: the back garden is a freer, more private space. You can do anything back there, protected from the (critical) eyes of the world; you can make a mess, you can tear things down, you can be more yourself, however that looks. But it’s not until you feel ready to take an idea from the back garden through the house to the front garden, Kessel says, that you’ve come close to something like great. That creative free space and its correlated vetting process (can I take this into the house? what will people think if it’s on my front door? can it survive in the front garden?) ensures that you’re not simply enthralled by the production of your brain, even if you need to give it free rein in order to arrive at what works.
The Emotions
Fredrik Öst & Erik Kockum: Founder and Creative Director at Snask, Fredrik Öst’s love for design began with a job he took on creating posters and cover art for a local record label. Erik Kockum is Partner and Creative Director at Snask, who found his passion for creativity through music. The Snask team see the “old conservative world” as their biggest enemy. www.snask.com
Öst and Kockum approached the question from a more affective angle. For them, great ideas are intrinsically emotional: they make you feel something (love, hate, fear, anger—they genuinely don’t seem to care, so long as it gets past polite indifference). Your own responses can be an initial test: is it uncomfortable, is it scary, does it make you insecure. You have to, says Öst, be afraid of your own idea—but be confident in your fear. Because that gut-twisting, shivering emotional response is the sign that you’re close to what you’re looking for.
The Logistics
Leland Maschmeyer: Chief Creative Officer of Chobani. Prior to joining Chobani in 2016, he was the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Collins, a brand and design consultancy with offices in New York and San Francisco. www.chobani.com www.leemaschmeyer.com
Maschmeyer offered his vetting process for the great idea: you don’t want to have seen it before, it should connect to something, and it should always feel new. His stories about conceiving, modifying, and perfecting ideas also noted that there is no “perfect” moment for the great idea, no practice or skill you can acquire in order to produce more of them. As with most creative endeavours, a solid amount of time is spent working on/with the “good enough” ideas—because you can trust that when its time arrives, the great idea will happen. We just have to cede control over it.
And Then There’s the Bad Ideas
Perhaps one of the most valuable threads in the panel conversation, though, was about bad ideas: what you do with them, how you manage them, why they might actually be intrinsic to the entire creative process. Öst and Kockum spoke at different points about how necessary it is to be able to let bad ideas go. Öst’s practice is to keep a notebook and pen beside him at night, so that when he wakes up with that flash of genius!, he can capture the idea rather than lose it to sleep. Of course, the next morning, the flash of genius! is not at all genius, but a kind of concept clearing house, and while Öst wipes away tears at not yet becoming a millionaire, the process is worthwhile because it clears out space for the good ideas.
There’s real trust in that process: hear/see the bad idea, give it time and space. Commit it to paper (or the back garden, Kessel would say), and know that even this frustrating, perhaps even agonizing part is necessary for creativity. This is why Öst advocates for the “yes, and” (an intrinsic part of the improv sketch), so that even if the idea looks and sounds as horrible as it likely is, giving it some airtime might just open up into something else. Something better. Something maybe even close to great. (Higgins offered an interesting counterpart to improv’s “yes, and” by suggesting that in the communications world, “no, but” might be as—if not more—fruitful.)
As much as the Audience team was keen to hear about the latest design trends and thinking, attending DT 2016 reminded us of the necessity to simply be in creative spaces. Not working. Just experiencing.
*Throughout the panel, Barney (the purple dinosaur, not the suave playboy of HIMYM fame) wandered throughout the room. It sometimes stood facing into a corner. Sometimes walked up and down the aisles. It walked up to the stage and stroked a presenter’s hair.