How to use mind mapping to structure your ideas

Being Creative

Being creative, is a most wonderful experience. Whether you work with wood, paint, sew, sing, garden, dance, create skin care ( yep that was one of my career hats) designing……etc etc

A Driving Force

Creativity and the need to be creative comes from you gut, its a true felt feeling that never stops. Its your driving force.

Expressing Your Creativity

This is essential. But sometimes we are unable practice our art. Work, stress, and other life factors can put a stop to it. Slowly you starting feeling frustrated and blocked. Some times you need a life changing experience or devision to push you back into your creative groove.

Or you are one of the lucky ones who have a smooth creative path.

The Question that bothers me

Can you be too creative? And to me the answer is No!!!!!!! Its all about structure

Do you find your head bouncing from one idea to another? Do you work on a project and whilst working have a marriad of other ideas? Then your brain gets all confused, and you become stressed and blocked.

Having all these ideas is GREAT but it is how you MANAGE your ideas and thoughts That makes all the difference. Its all about STRUCTURE.

Managing your ideas

When you feel like this STOP, take a break and a depth breath. The get a large piece of paper and write down your ideas. The best way of creating a collecting and collating your ideas is with a structured mind map.

All ideas come for a central point and expand outward

I love this image, imagine your core ideas at the centre, in the dark void. See your thoughts and ideas expanding outwards. The different colours denote different catagories and ideas. print or copy this image and start to collect and categorise your ideas on this image.

Another method of mind mapping is to draw your own

The central Heart is the main project or idea you are working on. Then each coloured bubble contains separate ideas that the main heart has inspired, you can also add and expand each bubble with ideas related to each colour. Mind mapping can be used for anything from design ideas to marketing, cooking etc. It stops your brain nerves from frying with to much unstructured thoughts. Its also great to look back in a few months to see what you have achieved.

SUMMARY

Its all about structure and working one step at a time.

Think of your creative channels and map them out on paper.

I still can go off track when I write a blog, so I always have a mind map by my side to keep me on track. I do the same with my art and design as I work with different mediums to create completely different collections.

I’d love to hear about your views on this topic, and ideas that you use to keep your creative thoughts structured. PLEASE leave your comments in the box below.

Thanks

Emma x

#mindmapping#mindmappingfordesigners#creativity#artanddesign