MENTAL MODELS are your monthly pocket-sized blueprints for structured intelligence. Synthesised frameworks derived from current data, research, and cultural trends, and precisely curated to be easily applicable tools as you work and create.
This exercise is loosely based on a foundation I learned early as a junior designer. Part of the job meant one had to have consistent access to creative novelty. When tasked with creating a new visual identity for a brand — one that had to translate across multiple communications — it became clear that the first ten ideas produced typically were fine but bland. That is, they addressed the brief, but needed yet to be a distinct, sophisticated, and compelling brand.
Pushing past ten ideas, into twenty, fifty, one hundred, things start to get strange.
This exercise forces us into the parameter of quantity first. Once a gritty, promising idea emerges, only then do we refine for quality.
Let’s dissect how to infuse novel creativity into your everyday thinking.
This month’s Mental Model:
The Hundred Idea Sketch
Key idea: Most people ideate within a ‘safe zone’; typically the first 5-10 ideas. These are often uninspiring and tired. Novelty emerges when you push past the comfort zone into the 20-50-100-ideas range, where ordinary ideas begin to mutate, blend, and transform into weird, delightful, and unexpected forms.
Use it for: Unlock novel ideas by deliberately pushing past the obvious, encouraging creative iteration, and embracing conceptual fuzziness before refinement.
Core components:
The exercise is simple:
Frame your creative challenge. Keep it concise and clear.
Generate freely: Sketch, journal or list 100 proposed ideas to address your challenge. Do not worry about feasibility, originality, or quality. Just get them out.
Iterate and combine: Expect things to get stranger as you go. Look for patterns, surprising intersections, or accidental combinations. Let ideas blur together — this is often where breakthroughs happen.
That’s it. Creativity can absolutely be a numbers game. Try it, and tell me how your mind takes you somewhere novel.
Learn more about how I help people and organisations navigate their brand strategy: https://rachelobrien.work/brand.