Images

What did we use as an image for “ideas” before the light bulb was invented?

It’s a pretty good icon, combining the concepts of “light” plus “invention” … but it’s no longer politically correct – we’re trying to phase out the incandescent bulb!

Images are, of course, metaphors in a visual language. Exploring the images most often attached to ideation and creativity is another way of exploring our fundamental concepts, and how we communicate in the process of innovation.

In the design of the site so far, we’ve been playing with a variety of different visual metaphors:

• The lightbulb (of course, but in its CFL incarnation)!
• Embryos at the early multi-cell stage (suggesting generative ideation)
• Stars in a nebula (suggesting spatial ideation as well as the nebula as an “incubator”)
• Members of a flock of birds (suggesting a group or set of ideas progressing in different directions)
• Branches of a tree (suggesting “branching” ideas or concepts)
• Post-its on a board (suggesting brainstorming)
• Neuron networks (suggesting the brain, cells firing, brainstorms and lightning)
• DNA models (suggesting lineage, birth, mutation)