Both jam and jelly are made from fruit mixed with sugar and pectin. The difference is that the source of fruit in jelly is juice and in jam it’s pulp. Individual recipes and flavors make each distinctive in appearance, texture and taste. At MasonBaronet, an integrated marketing communications firm in Dallas, creative director Paul Jerde spoons up Creative Jams to whet the staff ’s appetite for exploration.
Every month, for about the cost of a pizza and an hour of time, Jerde arranges what has become known around the office as a Creative Jam. 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.
Jerde is quick to credit Willie Baronet for establishing the Jams as a favorite staple of the 15-year-old firm. MasonBaronet’s clients generally represent industry leaders in the health care, technology, legal and hospitality design sectors. Helping drive business and build brand awareness, the full-service firm offers integrated marketing communications, branding, account planning, research, advertising and interactive expertise.
“Creativity is at the heart and soul of our organization,” Jerde says. “It’s always been part of our culture. The clock’s ticking and we all feel the pressure to produce stuff and make decisions. We’re not just an assembly line for other people’s ideas. We want to give our staff a safe place to tap their energy, to experience that feeling of togetherness, to luxuriate in this creative pool. Rather than a budget and a deadline, it’s just me, you and the crayons.”
As a result, Jerde finds the Creative Jams have fostered greater camaraderie and better communication between the firm’s departments and staff. “When you’re working from personal experience you’re naturally excited and outspoken about your ideas,” he explains. “Being aware of these feelings as we present our work to one another makes it easier for us to manufacture that energy for clients.”
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.
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,” Jerde says. 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.
“One of our Jams came at a time when we were all really busy and having a hard time escaping the grind of the day,” he recalls. “Still, we took a moment to gather together. Each of us was handed a balloon and a label. We wrote what was blocking our creativity on the label, stuck it to the balloon and released it. It was two seconds, but it was really potent.”
For Jams that result in more tangible creative out- comes (such as sketches, ink stamps, etc.), 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.”
PUTTING A STAMP ON IT
“Raw material” literally provided the ingredients for the most recent Creative Jam. Jerde brought raw sweet potatoes to the office, but they weren’t for lunch. Prompted by a home craft project with his son, Jerde invited each participant to grab a potato and knife. Everyone was asked to carve a personal mark into the tuber. They then transferred it onto paper using black acrylic paint.
Raising a few eyebrows, art director Sarah Treanor carefully carved a geometric silhouette of a rat’s face into her potato as her personal stamp. “I like exploring the forced connections between objects,” she says, noting that she has a pet rat but also appreciates how the stamp’s long nose can resemble an X-Acto knife or a marker tip. “The presentation and interpretation add more layers to the whole experience.”
Unleash Your Creative Hound
|
Loading ...
