Creative Ideas are Not Found or Developed on the Computer

What is it about?

Preparing students to enter the creative advertising field has always been challenging, as technology and media are constantly evolving. This study explores the creative process and identifies whether advances in technology have affected its diverse steps. The first part of the article reviews the literature on educating creatives, ideation, design and production and technology. The second part outlines the method used to gather and analyze openended survey answers from 39 creatives and art directors. The third section presents the results of the survey, and the final section situates the findings in advertising pedagogy in the digital age.

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Why is it important?

Our findings support and extend Habib (2015), Robbs (1996) and Kendrick et al. (1996) on the importance of ideation skills and the effects of technology on creative output. As digital natives who may think “technology first” enter advertising classes and then enter the advertising industry, educators should listen to the voices of working professionals. What we have heard is that pen and paper still matter. We believe our data suggest that instructors need to redirect students to think about the computer first as an inspiration tool and pen and paper as an idea execution smorgasbord. Sketching is a great way to envision multiple ideas, quickly and without bias. Initial ideas that can conspicuously express the big idea in rudimentary form have a good chance of surviving the ideation stage to be developed further on the computer.

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