Every month, for about the cost of a pizza and an hour of time, the Dallas-based integrated marketing communications firm MasonBaronet stages what's become known around the office as a Creative Jam for its creative staff. These outings give the MasonBaronet team a chance to stretch their conceptual skills. There are two key goals to these meetings: build staff unity and gain new perceptions from creative exploration.

Creative Jams offers a relatively easy recipe for any creative team to follow: Choose a task or destination; establish a medium for participants to visualize or document their individual perceptions of the experience; then reunite all participants to share their perceptions with one another. “Usually, the Jams last 60 minutes including lunch,” says creative director Paul Jerde, who plans each outing. Some of MasonBaronet’s sessions require 40 minutes for traveling and eating, leaving just 20 minutes for the creative exercise. Others take 10 minutes for lunch and allow 50 minutes for discovery.

Jerde encourages that the creatives put more emphasis on the conceptual value of the idea than on its production or finished value. “The work has a grassroots feel to it,” he says. “It’s not supposed to be premeditated or finessed. It’s about letting go. We’re trying to capture that creative lightning, so the work isn’t polished, it’s pretty raw.”

Jerde says that he’s constantly studying and reading about creative exercises and techniques. “Visual Literacy: A Conceptual Approach to Graphic Problem Solving” by Judith and Richard Wilde has been a recent source of inspiration for Creative Jams, but Jerde finds new themes almost everywhere. 

Here's one of the office's favorite Creative Jams; let it inspire you to try something new at your office:

Uncovering type everywhere
For one Creative Jam, he staff took digital cameras with them at lunchtime during July’s Taste of Dallas, an annual weekend event of food, music and other activities in the city’s historic district. Each participant was instructed to record examples of found typography and then assemble the characters into affirmative messages about the neighborhood and the company.

“We saw all sorts of interesting typography in the environment: faded hand-painted signs on brick walled buildings, fresh vinyl letters on food booths, silk-screened messages on T-shirts,” one staffer recalls.

While an unexpected downpour put a damper on the quality of photos and, consequently, the end result, Treanor found a silver lining. “Like the weather, creativity is unpredictable. It comes and goes like happy accidents,” she says. “Often, we find inspiration outside of our four walls. It’s very different than looking at your computer screen all day. The Jams remind us to take inspiration from our lives and culture, which makes each idea much richer in meaning.”
She continues, “One inspiration turns into an idea that turns into a real job. It’s very subtle, and sometimes you’re not even aware you’re collecting and storing these experiences to draw from in the future. But I feel they’re vital to the creative process.”

Other Creative Jams for you to try:
Putting a Stamp On It
Piecing the Picture Together
Bringing Art to Life
Branding a Philosophy
Getting Back to Nature

Excerpted from "Making Jam" in the June 2008 issue .