After Research and Strategy building, we move on to developing creative concepts. This is a time for our writers, designers, photographers, and web developers to come together and generate ideas.

How should this piece look and sound? What will give it impact? And what will make it the right instrument to do the job our client needs done?

People sometimes ask how we come up with something fresh every time. The answer is that every project brings together a different combination of creative thinkers with a different school or university facing a different challenge. The uniqueness of the result is almost automatic.

We don’t ask, “What could we do that’s never been done before?” That tends to lead to gimmicky dead ends. We do ask, “What would feel just right for this organization?” Or “How can we take the inspiring glimpse of the place we’ve seen and capture it for the rest of the world?”

The result of this collaboration is a set of choices for you, our customer.We present these in the form of mock-ups showing sample covers and inside pages or home pages and sub pages—complete with photo ideas and sketch headlines. The point is to give everyone a very tangible sense of how the project will really look and work when complete.

We present these ideas to you. We weigh their relative merits. We discuss, debate and listen, and your questions and suggestions lead to refinements and revisions. This can also be a point to share our work in progress with members of our target audience, either in small informal conversations or focus groups.