Visit the Writerly Play Studio and gain fresh perspective on your project with this visual thinking activity. Never heard of the WP Studio? Learn how Writerly Play thinking strategies supercharge your creativity here.
Wondering about your vision for a project, a vacation, a relationship, a character? Try creating a collage! Give your verbal thinking a break and let images lead the way. The answers you stumble across may surprise you.
Try This:
- Grab a stack of old magazines.
- Choose a focusing question for your collage, such as “What do I want my vacation to feel like?”
- Flip through the magazines and tear out any images that speak to you. If words leap off the page at you, tear those out as well, but focus on images first. Don’t forget to consider color, texture and shape. These more abstract elements can add insights to your collage.
- Once you have a pile of images, sort through and start to arrange them into a coherent collage. You may want to go back and look for items that now seem important to round out the idea.
- Use scissors and glue to cut and paste the images onto a thick sheet of paper.
- If you decide you need additional words, go back and find the words, or find letters so you can spell out the words. Or, be creative and create letter forms of your own to layer over your images.
- Once your collage is complete, share it with a friend. When you articulate the meaning behind what you have created, you will become even more aware of what the collage means.
- Before you put the collage away, ask yourself, “What actions might I take, now that I have this insight?” Take advantage of the insights that your playful mind has provided.
Note: I’d highly recommend magazines over a Google search. In a magazine, you’re likely to stumble across an image you’re not expecting, and surprises often lead us to the most compelling insights.
