Creativity Magazine

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

By Mrstrongest @mrstrongarm

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For YouStumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For YouHere’s a story about a greeting card design, shoveling snow, and letting your subconscious do the work.Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

I was working on a Christmas card design. I thought I had a sure-fire gag: “burning” CD’s by putting them in a toaster.

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

I needed a funny payoff line inside the card, and some sort of setup line (text) on the outside along with the drawing.

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

My original idea for the setup line was “I burned you a couple of CD’s.” And because it was a Christmas card, I made one CD red, and the other green. So the front looked like this:

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
For the inside payoff line, I thought one of these might work:
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

“Pretty hot stuff. Merry Christmas!”
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

“You do like Christmas carols, I hope.”
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

“Ho-ho-ho. Merry Christmas!!”
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
But it all fell flat. The joke was there, I could feel it– but it wasn’t working. Something was wrong, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

Eventually I walked away from it (which is always hard for me to do).

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

Not sure how much time elapsed, but I was out shoveling snow last week, not thinking of anything in particular, when suddenly the answer popped into my head: the “I burned you a couple of CD’s” belonged inside the card as the payoff line.

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

I decided to use “You like Christmas carols, am I right??” as the setup line, and “Good. I burned you a couple of CD’s” as the payoff line inside.

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

I made a few other tweaks as well (described below). Here’s a compare. Click the image to see the compare at full-screen size.

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
Besides giving your subconscious time to solve a problem, letting an image lie has another advantage: when you revisit it, you suddenly see corrections that are needed, and/or ways to improve the image.
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You
Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You

I saw that my “smoke puff lines” needed to expand to fit the entire smoke cloud.

Stumped? Let Your Subconscious Solve The Problem For You


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