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Intro dude: 00:01 Welcome to Design Speaks. This lovely podcast is brought to you by a graphic design geek and a regular human being. AKA a non-designer. We’re here to chat about music, pop culture, cool places or basically whatever we feel is relevant.

Brandi: 00:16 Hey guys, I’m Brandi Sea.

Michelle: 00:17 And Michelle.

Brandi: 00:18 And you’re listening to episode 84 of Design Speaks.

Michelle: 00:21 On today’s episode. We are continuing our series on process. Brandi’s process specifically and today we’re going to be covering the topic of word maps. Mind maps, mind searches, what are they?

Brandi: 00:35 Word maps. I used to call them mind maps. I started calling them ward maps because it makes more sense to how I do them.

Michelle: 00:43 Because they’re words.

Brandi: 00:44 Yeah. Because they’re words.

Michelle: 00:45 Their map of words.

Brandi: 00:45 Um, I have, I have this whole thing of, of using words first. So small recap on what we talked about last week. Steps one and two are the client meeting and the design brief. So where we’re gonna start today is taking you taking those words from question 12, which was the adjectives that your client gives you to describe their, their product or their service. And so, um, I’m going to try really hard. This is a this is a really visual thing.

Michelle: 01:16 Which is funny because it’s words.

Brandi: 01:17 Right? So this is both. So if you know anything about what a mind map is or like, um, like free writing and stuff like that, you basically start with one word or phrase or something at the center of a page and it’s either circled or in a square and you basically just let your mind go and you make connections. So design is all about making connections. So we might even have to split this part into two because there’s just too much. And this is the most important part of my process without this part everything else just falls to pieces. And I want to make sure that I explain it really well because it is so visual and did so important. Design is all about making connections. We make visual connections to emotions. We make visual connections to to words, to attitudes, to everything that we do is about connecting. Connecting people to products, connecting people to brands. So I don’t even, Gosh, I don’t even know when I started using this as part of my process.

Michelle: 02:22 Who taught this to you?

Brandi: 02:22 That’s what I’m trying to. I, I honestly don’t know. I, I’ve always, if I hadn’t gotten into graphic design, I would have been an English major. I decided,

Michelle: 02:33 So words are a love already.

Brandi: 02:34 Yeah. Words are like the love of my life. I love reading. I love writing and I took a lot of writing and reading classes. Um in college and I guess you don’t take reading classes, you take literature classes. I learned how to read in college. Um, so I think somewhere along the way I, I may have said this before, I don’t remember if I have said it, but I think I just knew about word maps, mind maps, and kind of

Michelle: 03:04 Well even, I remember being in seventh grade and kind of going over something like that. It was like this. I remember them just being spider webs. Um, and it was just something that we did, but it wasn’t.

Brandi: 03:15 Webs, yeah they’re called webs too.

Michelle: 03:18 Yeah. It wasn’t something that was made to be important because we weren’t designing things so.

Brandi: 03:24 Well. And the, the, the, the point of, of mind maps in a, in a intellectual sort of lit space is, you know, you’re trying to find themes, excuse me, themes in literature and I think that’s kind of where this came from was like I wanted to be able to find connections and themes in a design to make a design. Um, and somewhere along the way it kind of turned into I can find a concept, a concept as a theme. I can find a concept through this. And then the more I did it and the more I delved into it, it was like this solves all my problems because by, by doing this, this word map, I can not only find a theme and concepts but in here are also visual cues to visual elements. I can use color cues are in here, shapes and psychology and all sorts of connections are all right here in front of me. I just have to understand how to pull them out and how to implement them in the rest of what I do. So, um, the, the word map basically splits into a few parts. So the word map helps you develop a concept. Um, it helps you find your visual elements which are shapes type, faces, colors, um, and helps you understand how you might want to execute your design, um, and what things to look for in the research phase.

Michelle: 04:54 Right.

Brandi: 04:55 So, um, and sometimes this is a little bit a teensy bit fluid for me depending on the topic. If I don’t feel like I know anything at all about what I’m dealing with with this client, I will do a little bit of research before I do the map so that I have something to build on because if I don’t know anything, those connections aren’t going to actually make any sense.

Michelle: 05:16 That makes sense.

Brandi: 05:17 And the connections that I make maybe completely unrelated to the thing that I’m trying to get to. Um, so how this works. So what you do, you start with a blank piece of paper and however, you want to do it, it doesn’t matter if the looseleaf, grids, dots anything you want, whatever works best for you. Um, I’m going to go with the one that I did for Ernest Hemingway that I just finished.

Michelle: 05:43 Okay.

Brandi: 05:43 So I decided, uh, thanks to the votes of my Instagram peeps that it was, it was a close match between, uh, Alice in Wonderland and a Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, which is one of my favorite books of all time. That I would do a book cover for A Moveable Feast. So what I did was I started with the word with the, with the, with the title of the book at the center, A Movable Feast. And because in this case, I didn’t have those adjectives to go on. Um, I basically just started with the, like the major themes that I know this book is about. So Paris, story, a friendship, authenticity, um, and so basic autobiography, those were like the first few connections bookstore. And so then you can, you basically do exactly like you would with a web or a mind map of any other kinds. You just start adding on words, making connections everywhere you can. Um, use a thesaurus if you hit a wall and that’s okay.

Michelle: 06:59 Yeah, I’d say the more that you do it, the easier it becomes because also you start growing your vocabulary and your ability to connect those words.

Brandi: 07:08 Yeah. Well, and, but even, even then, like I’m a word Geek and

Michelle: 07:14 Sometimes you will hit a wall

Brandi: 07:15 You will hit a wall. But the thesaurus is actually like your very best friend.

Michelle: 07:18 Have you ever had to like get up and walk away from a word map?

Brandi: 07:22 Yeah, all the time. I don’t always, I don’t always do it in one sitting. Um, I, I will, I will be especially because I want it to be the best that it can be. Um, and the goal for me like when you know that you’re done is like when you filled up the page like my goal is to get edge to edge with words. So if I feel like I’m, I think I’m done, I think I could probably find a concept in here. It’s probably true. However, I want to find the most unique concept, the most unique ideas, and the only way you can do that is to really delve deep and to go more and more and more.

Michelle: 07:59 And it might be the first word you wrote down, but you don’t know that until you fill up edge to edge.

Brandi: 08:05 Right. So, um, attach every relatable words word from colors to shapes to images and anything and everything that connects in your mind. So um from.

Michelle: 08:16 So basically nothing is off limits.

Brandi: 08:18 Nothing is off limits. So I started with Paris and ended up with a journey.

Michelle: 08:26 Okay, That’s good. So they connect.

Brandi: 08:27 Yeah. So Paris went to streets, went to walking, went to the Seine river, went to path, went to walk, went to journey.

Michelle: 08:33 Okay.

Brandi: 08:33 Um, and that’s just one of them. Some of the more interesting ones were autobiography went to, written to writing, to typing to typewriters to paper, to keys to black and white letters.

Michelle: 08:48 Okay.

Brandi: 08:48 So there’s color in there already. So it’s black and white. Um, so all of that kind of is the key to actually how this looks.

Michelle: 08:58 Okay.

Brandi: 08:59 So how does that make sense?

Michelle: 09:01 That really helps. I mean, I feel like many of us are going to know what it kind of looks like, but when you look at like you can see what it looks like, but you’re like, how the heck do I get that?

Brandi: 09:11 Yeah. And

Michelle: 09:11 So that really helps.

Brandi: 09:12 If you look at my Instagram. You can look at past posts, usually, if there’s a logo or something and it has multiple pictures or some sort of

Michelle: 09:19 The mind map will be there.

Brandi: 09:20 The mind map,

Michelle: 09:20 The word maps

Brandi: 09:21 The word maps attached somewhere along the way. Um, so I’m gonna just, I’m just going to talk a little bit more about. Um finding, I’m going to talk about finding the concept in here. Um, this is, and we’ll talk about, um, we’ll talk a little bit about the colors and stuff if we have time. If not, we’ll split that into the next one. But, um, the concept is one of the more difficult areas to explain. One, because sometimes people don’t even know why they need a concept, um, but it’s basically if you don’t have a guiding idea, you’re going to be lost. You need some sort of call back point to why you’re doing everything.

Michelle: 09:59 That makes sense.

Brandi: 09:59 That you’re making. Um, so

Michelle: 10:02 Have you ever seen somebody work without a solid concept in mind?

Brandi: 10:07 Yeah, all the time.

Michelle: 10:08 It’s rough. It’s like maybe it’s because I’m so used to having to, making sure I have that concept in place before I move forward, whether it’s my project or I’m helping someone with their’s is almost, it’s like watching an awkward episode of the office. You’re like, Oh.

Brandi: 10:25 You know that’s ended badly, right?

Michelle: 10:27 Don’t do it.

Brandi: 10:29 Yeah, I have. Absolutely. And some people don’t think that it’s necessary. It’s like, well, I just think this is gonna work.

Michelle: 10:35 Hmm, okay.

Brandi: 10:36 Okay. And that’s when you end up, you know, we’ve talked about the difference between concepts and executions and that whole thing. So that’s when you ended up in that space. Um, so your concept of finding a journey will be fairly straightforward. If you can understand how, if I can explain this to you, well now on this podcast going into this, you’ve already got your adjectives that you’ve built on because of the brief, you have the problem that your client needs for you to solve the goal, what success will look like and who are you trying to target with this thing. Um, so those things are what are going to guide this phase of concept finding. So there’s all sorts of usable, awesome words in this mind map, right? There could be 100 words in here that makes sense and they all make sense because they’re all connected.

Michelle: 11:24 Right.

Brandi: 11:24 So it’s like, oh my gosh, I have all these words, but how do I get a concept out of it? Okay, what problem are you trying to solve? What feel are you trying to get? So those were those feeling words that the client talked about, like what, what do you, what two things do you want people to feel?

Michelle: 11:40 Yeah.

Brandi: 11:41 You look for those things. So you’re gonna look for and circle words. So I would always have like three different color markers or highlighters ready because you’re going to need one color for the concept words, one color for color words in one color for visual words.

Michelle: 11:54 Right.

Brandi: 11:55 Um, so you look for and circle words that stand out to you as applicable to solving the problem to the target.

Michelle: 12:03 Right.

Brandi: 12:03 With the right feeling.

Michelle: 12:05 Yeah. It’s like where it’s words that are gonna help you. It’s words that are going to help you explain to the client why this is the route we should take.

Brandi: 12:15 Right. Exactly. For example, I did a poster for that, um, the Pagosa Springs, um, company and the mind map that I did for A Few Good Men, the play, um, the, the words I circled ended up leaving me with a few options. Um, blind obedience, blind honor, and blind justice. Um, and I got there through military, through secrets, through marines, Navy, um, honor, duty, courtroom truth, all the things that this, this play is about. And what you do next is once you’ve identified those words, you list them all out in like a stack. You stack every single word on top of each other.

Michelle: 13:01 Okay.

Brandi: 13:01 So this is a new page, or on the same page. If you have room, I usually suggest a new page that you aren’t limited space.

Michelle: 13:06 Clean slate. Yeah.

Brandi: 13:07 Um, so you get those words and then you go through and if you see words that are similar, so if there’s words like tough or strong, those are similar. Choose which one you feel works best on which one describes the feeling that you’re trying to achieve best. And then you cross those ones out. Then you look at the words that you’re left with. Then once you’ve identified them and them and eliminated the similar words you combine, you start mixing and matching those words to come to come up with two or three word like descriptive phrases.

Michelle: 13:42 Okay.

Brandi: 13:43 Um, so like I said, this one was, these ones were blind obedience, blind honor, and blind justice. Blind was one of those words that was going to be key to this.

Michelle: 13:51 And it’s consistent. It’s throughout the entire thing.

Brandi: 13:53 Right. But some of them are not like that. Some of them are going to be a, oh goodness. Let’s see here. Um, so I’m looking at the one for this other play called Pillow Man, child shadow, um, book at book as closet shadow words, a child in book. So those are all really simple, but basically, you just continue combining things. Combined, combined, combined.

Michelle: 14:21 Right.

Brandi: 14:22 Then you, you go back through and you look at your list. Once you’ve combined all the things you can combine and you go, which one of these doesn’t make sense at all? Like if I were to say these two words together.

Michelle: 14:32 No.

Brandi: 14:33 No, they don’t make sense.

Michelle: 14:34 It’s kind of like shopping when you’re loading stuff into your car at the end you’re like, what do I not need in here?

Brandi: 14:40 Yes.

Michelle: 14:40 Like I’m saving money today.

Brandi: 14:42 Yes, exactly. That’s perfect. That’s the best I’m gonna have to use that in my next presentation. So um now the other thing to finding the concept. Okay, first you eliminate the obvious nonsense words, nonsense phrases. Um, the next thing that you’re going to want to look for is, um, which of these things can be actually visually communicated? So it might sound really good, but is this something I can actually execute visually? Um, does that make sense?

Michelle: 15:14 Yes.

Brandi: 15:15 So, um, I’m going to find this one that I did.

Michelle: 15:18 It’s like, it’s got to be more than words that sound good together. You got to be able to show that they are good together.

Brandi: 15:26 Exactly. And you have to be able to refer back to that as a concept. Um, so, uh, for, for the, for the Pillow Man, what I ended up with was scary children’s book. You can get a visual of what that might look like to you.

Michelle: 15:42 Yeah, it’s like ghost stories. Yeah.

Brandi: 15:44 So, okay. So let’s say we have, um, I haven’t gotten my concept yet for Hemingway. That’s my, I have, I’m, I’m on the step of. I’ve listed out all my words and I’m in the process of that still.

Michelle: 15:56 So that’s another important thing that people should know is that this doesn’t happen in a day.

Brandi: 16:01 No, I mean some can. If you have time.

Michelle: 16:04 Sometimes, if you have, if you, if you have a deadline, then you need to shorten the process to make it work within the deadline.

Brandi: 16:09 So then you just do less of a mind map and you just do less phrases and less things, but you still do all the steps.

Michelle: 16:17 Yes.

Brandi: 16:17 Okay. So say we have a concept. Um, let’s go with A Few Good Men and um, I believe that I ended up going with blind honor and it was blind justice and obedience. So basically, um, I found this concept, so then once I’ve got that concept, then I go back into this with my new color highlighter and I find all the words that are colors, blue, green, colorful, anything that sounds like a color. You go back and you circle those words.

Michelle: 16:45 Okay.

Brandi: 16:46 Then you just pull them out and put them to the side in a list.

Michelle: 16:48 Even the word colorful.

Brandi: 16:49 Even the word colorful, it’s related to color.

Michelle: 16:52 Correct.

Brandi: 16:52 Um colorful just means many colors. So that design might need many colors.

Michelle: 16:58 Right.

Brandi: 16:58 Um, and then after that, you’re going to go back in and look for visual words. So these were, this is another area where people kind of get hung up on what her visual words, visual words or something you can visualize. So circles, um, photographs, any like Eiffel Tower, a road, something that if I asked you to find a picture of it, you can probably do it or an icon or something. So once you get those things then you have a basis for what stuff to search for and what stuff to research. So if, if my concept for A Few Good Men was blind obedience and blind justice, I’m going to be able to search that avenue in my research for things. I now have a color palette that I’m looking for. So, in this case, I’ve got, um, navy, I’ve got gold, black, green, um, and those are all colors that relate to the military. Those are all applicable but also, um, blue and red and white because this is something that is an American justice system. Um, and so you’ve got things like a flag. You’ve got soldier.

Michelle: 18:06 Visual.

Brandi: 18:06 All those things are visual. So once I went to go search online for, visual elements, I searched on stock photo sites for soldiers. For flags for, what does justice look like?

Michelle: 18:26 Right.

Brandi: 18:26 So it’s got like the scales and all the things that you might have been able to get to all, all on your own by just going, oh, it’s blind justice. Of course, it’s the statue that’s, you know, blindfolded or whatever.

Michelle: 18:38 Right, but.

Brandi: 18:39 But the execution that I ended up with was a juxtaposition of a soldier over a statue of blind justice where he is saluting with a flag covering his eyes and he’s got a gun and it’s blind justice still holding the scales. So there’s the gun with the scales, with him being covered with the flags. So there’s all this symbolism that you get to work in that I don’t think I would have got to know if I was just like, oh, A Few Good Men. Yeah, I’ve seen that movie. I can make a poster for that.

Michelle: 19:09 And maybe you would have gotten some of it, but it wouldn’t have been as well thought out or laid out. I think in the end of your, whatever you gave them.

Brandi: 19:17 Right. And then what happens is the client sees it and goes, oh.

Michelle: 19:21 Wouldn’t it be cool if?

Brandi: 19:22 Why did you, why did you decide to do that? I have every, every reason.

Michelle: 19:27 Right. Right.

Brandi: 19:28 Because I know what I was doing. Whereas if, if someone just through like blind justice on there and colored it red, white and blue, why did you do that? Well, because it’s about the military.

Michelle: 19:37 And doesn’t it look cool?

Brandi: 19:39 It’s nice. Like, which you’re not. You’re not telling them how you solved their problem.

Michelle: 19:45 Right.

Brandi: 19:45 You’re not communicating the message, the feel, the idea of the piece.

Michelle: 19:49 That’s good.

Brandi: 19:50 Um, so, um, yeah, so I think that that’s probably the core of it from there you, you just put it all together and we’ll talk more about, um, basically sketching and the next phase of researching and all this stuff. And I skipped a little bit ahead because I did talk about the execution, but that was more just to explain what you do with those elements.

Michelle: 20:15 It’s necessary. Totally necessary.

Brandi: 20:16 So I, I’m asking you, did that explain how I work with the mind map?

Michelle: 20:21 I think that’s good. I think that’s a very good overview and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, especially specifically Brandi. Um, to answer anything that you were maybe not following, but I was able personally to follow all of that. I tried to like not look at you while you’re talking so I could visualize and make sure that I could visualize it.

Brandi: 20:44 Okay, good.

Michelle: 20:44 Um, yeah. So that’s, that is the overview like from 30 k of the word map and it’s not even, it’s like 30 k with like, oh look, there’s a pool down there.

Brandi: 20:54 It’s like on the descent.

Michelle: 20:54 Yeah. It’s like, oh, I’m about to get cell phone reception. So I think that was good. Thank you for that. We will continue this series and a few weeks next week we are going to be having an interview with Scott Belsky.

Brandi: 21:08 One of my creative heroes.

Michelle: 21:10 If you don’t know who he is, go check him out. He was actually pretty well known and he’s a pretty cool dude. So looking forward to that. And then after that, we will continue this whole series.

Brandi: 21:20 And I think you know where to find us and thank you to Colin and see you guys next week.