The Birth of Ideas

Yesterday's topic was just way too heavy. So today I felt like lightening the mood. Two questions I am always asked, "How do you come up with your ideas?" and "How do you create the idea?".

First, you have to consider what you are doing. Is it for an ad, article or cover. If it is a cover shoot, I usually work with a creative director from the magazine and we discuss the theme of the cover and ideas. Then I take those ideas and sketch them out on paper. From there I take it to the nail and do a few practice runs and take digital pictures to seed to the CD. That's when we decide it's great or tweak a few things.

If it is for an article, again you are working with an editor whom is writing the story. For this, I usually have creative freedom. I just take the theme into consideration and dig through my magic folder and box of bits and baubles I've collected through out the years.

Lastly, ads and catalogs. These are the easiest of all. I have just about full creative freedom at Star Nail International. Being a member of the Marketing Team and a tech makes it very easy to suggest ideas and work together to get what we want for the shoot. I do have to say, we've got an amazing group of people. If you have seen any of our marketing work over the last few years, I would hope you'd agree that it's pretty hot.

For this blog, I used images from a project I did a few years ago. The owner of the publication, "Nails International" asked me to do the cover of his first issue. I worked with photographer, Brooks Ayola and model Michelle Sandquist. Naturally we wanted an international theme since the submission in the issue came from actual techs all over the world. Flags was the easy idea. However, I felt it was a little too simple and decided to give it my own touch. I have a collection of currency from every country I have visited. What I did was choose ten flags from ten countries I've been to. I then took the currency and used a heart shaped hole puncher to make little nail art bits to insert into the flag designs. The last element was the globe. I didn't want to favor the United States or any particular country so we basically kept spinning the globe like a basketball and shooting it where it landed. We were surprised to discover that Michelle's left pointer nail (containing the Scotland Flag) is actually pointing at Scotland on the Globe.

Elaine
(writing from Valencia, CA today)