Thinking Outside the Box
Its always been assumed that ‘thinking outside the box’ is wild and the most truly creative. Well no it isn’t really, when compared with solving problems by employing well used imagery and existing information, but in original ways. This is far more tricky. Take great art for instance, Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’, did he start with a ‘blank canvas’ (metaphorically)? Did he invent all the characters and the actual event? No, he portrayed what was thought to have happened to a ‘brief’ from his patron (the church). He did however do it in an original way, by using facial expressions and gestures, more effectively then ever before (but he was definitely thinking ‘inside the box’). Even when he ‘invented’ the helicopter by making drawings of one, he based them on a well known medieval toy that kids threw about at the time and he modified it. He was again thinking from inside the box.
Being creative, especially in the field of design, is thinking ‘inside the box’. Otherwise you are wasting people’s time. The answer (or design solution) is nearly always sitting somewhere within the original question. If a dentist wants a new website for dental marketing purposes that is unique, we’ll investigate and read through all the information provided. Inevitably we find that each practice is individual in numerous ways. These ‘points of difference’ provide the basis for a unique dental website design.
As a Creative Director, I used to mentor young designers and I found it was a question of letting them learn through experience and honest feedback. Consumer research, gives you great feedback from the ‘man or woman in the street’, not from other supposedly ‘brilliant’, ‘creative’ thinkers. This way you just hear what people honestly think of your design. After all, it is these people that you designed it for in the first place. A website has to appeal to it’s audience, not try and win a Turner prize. It has a job to do and the term ‘design’ these days means: getting something to work functionally and visually. Our dental websites both function and catch the eye. The E-Type Jag is a beautiful classic car, but would it have been so admired if it only went at 10 miles an hour? Our websites perform well, they rank high for Search Engine Optimization, as well as look good. We achieve this by thinking firmly from ‘inside the box’.
Adrian Adler is “the Wizard” at Dental Focus Web Design.
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