Creative Thinking for Designers (DSGN 122) Pushes First Year Students (IDEA Grad 2024) to Explore 100 Iterations of a Theme

How do you grow as a designer? How to you get better at coming up with ideas? How do you become a stronger illustrator? How do you develop your own unique style?

There is a misnomer that creative solutions come out of the blue; that they are born through a flash of inspiration.

Working illustrators know that style isn’t contrived. It emerges from years of studying how other illustrators have solved problems and then putting in the time to develop a unique voice.

Working designers know that if you put in the time and do the work, a solid solution will usually emerge out of it. Your first idea might be the best, but it is only after coming up with many more solutions that you will know your final solution is solid. For this reason, many studios have the 100 guide: If you come up with 100 ideas, 90 will be ok, 9 will be good and 1 might just be great, so don’t stop working until you’ve explored 100 solutions.

There are no shortcuts, there is no quick and easy path to good work.

The last assignment of IDEA School of Design’s 1st-year DSGN 122 Creative Thinking for Designers pushes students to explore this concept. They are challenged with exploring 100 iterations of a theme; ideally something they’d like to get better at.

For illustrators, this might involve exploring how 100 other illustrators have broken down and stylized form. For designers, it might be exploring 100 abstract word associations or 100 ways to represent a single concept. Each student is tasked with challenging themselves to get better at something; either conceptually or through execution.

Shown above: A sample from “100 Typographical Foods” by Celina Zhong.

Here are some of this year’s projects.

“100 Typographical Foods” by Celina Zhong

The challenge for me was coming up with different ways to create typography with food illustrations. When thinking of a way to combine all these tiles, I decided to arrange them according to Canada's Food Guide portions and ordered them from most sustainable to least sustainable. Everything was done in Adobe Illustrator.

Instagram: @celinaa.jpg

"100 of 0" by Clarice Mah

This was one of my favourite projects this year! By coming up with one hundred ways to interpret “nothing”, I was able to challenge my creative thinking abilities. Who knew so much can be created from nothing?

Instagram: @clarices_art

"100 Uses For A Stick" by Ethan Woronko

I tried to channel my childhood self and think of all the ways a stick could be used, and they got rather ridiculous at times.

Instagram: @epworonko_art

"100 Illustrators In Their Style" by Hannah Bontinen

The 100 project was my greatest triumph this year. Not only did I get to explore and recreate different illustrators’ unique styles, but I put my work ethic to the test working on multiple illustrations whenever I had the chance.

Instagram: @hannah.art.design

Close-ups by Hannah Bontinen

"100 Figures Showing Different Emotions" by Imogen Pettyfer

The 100 Project is all about strengthening your skills and since I never really set myself up to be comfortable with drawing human figures, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and do exactly that. Draw 100 figures and to keep things interesting, illustrate them all showing different emotions by studying the different nuances in the facial expressions depending on the emotion. In addition to the figures, I have always been very colour orientated with everything that I do so I chose to use colours to help show the 100 emotions. Along with my personal colour orientation, I researched colour theory and colour psychology to assist with finding 100 colours to go with each figure. For my final result, I organized the colours focusing on their hue and brightness and placing them in the final layout that you see here.

Instagram: @imogenpettyfer_designs

"100 Illustrators Drawn In Their Style" by Jordan Van Bergen

Drawing 100 illustrators in their own distinctive style was definitely time consuming, but the end result made it all worth it. Now, I feel like I have an idea of where to take my own personal art style. Not to mention feeling much more comfortable drawing in Procreate.

Instagram: @neko.art.sume

"100 Chicken And Egg Puns" by Natasha Lee

For this project, I illustrated out 100 chicken and egg puns — inspired by the paradox, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" This project was all about careful time management, idea generation, and pushing ourselves to the brink of insanity. For me, the trickiest part about the process was finding ways to reinterpret each saying visually. I had so much fun doing this series, but my family and I will be scarred forever from the eggscrutiating weeks of terrible pun generation. Ultimately, I am happy I did not chicken out on this idea!

Instagram: @spring_day6

"Multiplying Like 100 Rabbits" by Tara Asadi

For the 100 project, I personally wanted to expriment and explore different styles of visual expression. I decided that my subject matter would be rabbits as it’s a funny nod to the “multiplying like rabbits” expression, especially since I had to create and reference a hundred different ways to illustrate a rabbit. When coming up with ideas, I tried to remember notable pop-culture styles that would come into mind and later on I decided to experiment with styles I came up with. Overall, it was a hectic yet fun exploration!

Sketches by Tara Asadi

See also: 100 chances to challenge herself: Cynthia Tran Vo's “mildly traumatizing” 100 Project