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:

Piecing the picture together
One of the first Jams that art director Jason Puckett experienced when he joined MasonBaronet took place at the Art Prostitute Gallery in Dallas during an exhibit of works inspired by the Dada movement—and it left quite an impression on him.

“We had lunch together then each of us walked the exhibit,” Puckett recalls. “Five of the works on the wall had a sheet of paper on the floor in a five-panel accordion fold. As we arrived at each work, we were given one minute to sketch something on the next available panel, as inspired by the piece. At the end of five minutes, we had five full sheets of five panels with each panel adding to the drawing before it, resulting in very strange looking creatures and scenes.” (This technique is called "Exquisite Corpse.")

He says that the bizarre images that the Jam produced were only part of the lesson. “As we held up each page, it was interesting to see the common correlations and the diversions. It helped each to understand the others’ point-of-view: ‘I see this, while you see that. I wouldn’t expect you to think that way. Now, I see it that way, too.’ It really helped us realize the power of the accordion fold and how the reveal of each panel can present an entire picture, while changing from start to end.”

Other Creative Jams for you to try:
Putting a Stamp On It
Uncovering Type Everywhere
Bringing Art to Life
Branding a Philosophy
Getting Back to Nature

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