Applied Imagination: Manipulative Verbs

I came across an interesting article in the latest issue of Print Magazine. It was an article by Ellen Lupton talking about the origin of brainstorming and some further ideas beyond that now ubiquitous method of idea creation.

Brainstorming was created by Alex F. Osborn in 1953 in a book Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking. The idea is to pose a question and create a big, uncensored list of ideas. By now we’re all pretty familiar with this technique.

However this article points out another Alex Osborn technique he called Manipulative Verbs. The idea is to take a core idea and create variations on a theme by applying different verbs to it, such as: magnify, minify, rearrange, alter, modify, substitute, reverse, and combine.

I’m suddenly totally intrigued by this idea and how you could use it to help refine some design ideas that you may be struggling with.

So I did a little experiment using a very common local interior design theme: Northwest Modern. If you’ve browsed any publication that mentions the Seattle area, this phrase, Northwest Modern gets thrown out all the time. But I’ve asked myself many times, what does that really mean?

So here’s my verbal sketches playing on the phrase using Manipulative Verbs

NORTHWEST MODERN

Magnify
Make it bigger! Expand outward. The great northwest. Outdoor/ indoor, open spaces, Native American. Forests, Mountains, Volcanoes.
Urban, urbane, Whole city scape. Topography! Use of natural materials in new ways. Great slabs of stone and wood.

Minify
A single evergreen tree; branches, wood, everlasting, forest for the trees.
Orca whale; black/white, curves, violent/gentle, connection, water, waves.

Substitute
Southwest modern implanted into NW culture. Fossil granite and tourquose with pine and cherry. Xeriscaping, with cactus and evergreen foliage combined. Dry riverbed concept through the house.

Reverse
Modern Northwest, a severely manmade unit in the middle of natural landscape, juxtaposition.

Combine
Put together Antebellum Southern style with NW modern. Large print wallpaper and pastels with dark mahogany wood and glass. White wicker around a rusted firepit and stone patio.


So these are just my quick “brainstorms” using Manipulative Verbs around a common concept. You can see how this could really help you bring your ideas into focus in unique and exciting ways.

When you’re looking at redesigning your space, it’s important to come up with an underlying Concept from which you can pull your ideas and to which you can return when you’re stuck. Manipulative Verbs along with Brainstorming could be another tool in your design box!