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:

Getting back to nature
Jerde presented a Creative Jam assignment to create an identity and ad for a fictitious flower shop. He guided the group to a flower-filled courtyard and provided paper and a handful of colored pencils. “We were allowed to pick two colors,” Puckett says, recalling that he chose navy and tan. “In 20 minutes, we had to come up with a name for the flower shop and sketch an ad.”

Because the Creative Jams make staffers work through their concepts quickly and in tandem, Puckett says the Jams have allowed the creatives to note firsthand how others work and approach problems. “How do you start? Where do you go? Do you begin with a list or a sketch?” he says of the inquiries. “Seeing how they work through it and listening to their perspectives, we learn how to work with them better.”

“Nurturing creativity is fundamental to our success,” Jerde concludes. “It’s written in our employee handbook. This is why we’re here. This is how great things happen.”

Excerpted from "Making Jam" in June 2008 issue.