4 Steps Every Creative Process Needs

The creative process is a lot like a long road trip: it needs preparation. Fill up the gas tank, pack your snacks and grab your GPS, because much like time spent in the car, it’s time-consuming yet rewarding. With the creative process, it’s about much more than the resulting destination, it’s the work put in before the final reveal. To help, here are four important steps to ensure an organized and efficient creative process:

1. Research: the beginning steps to the creative process involves gathering all information needed to execute a plan. This can mean a lot of collaboration and ensuring a full understanding of the goals. It’s the exploration stage of the process, and is crucial in having a full understanding of the topics.
2. Develop: the second step involves organizing this information to better define the problem or opportunity, and the most efficient path to solve it. It’s a time to brainstorm routes, methods and creative pathways to reach the objective. Developing information into a tactic.
3. Manifest: this is the time to let the ideas marinate until the lightbulb illuminates above you. It’s a chance to experiment, and weed out the ideas that aren’t the perfect fit. From there, you can piece together the perfect creative project puzzle.
4. Implement: this is the execution of the project, and means putting your notes into action. Time to meet the deadlines, stay organized and carry out project requirements. It’s the opportunity to put your process and skill into action.

With these four steps, the creative process is efficient and comprehensive; it allows the designer to take it piece by piece, and thoroughly explore options and paths. The creative preparation process is your chance to honor your project and objective before reaching the reward of a successful destination.