Every designer would want to know the secret recipe for producing excellent designs - if there was one out there - and in 1944 James Webb Young thought he'd found it. Without claiming his approach to be the be-all and end-all, he does outline a process that he found helped him come up with innovative solutions for communicating a message. In effect then, this is his 'manifesto', and he outlines it in his book A Technique for Producing Ideas, as follows:
Summary: New solutions are made just by combining old elements in new ways. Follow the next 5 points in the order they come in.
1. Don't wait for inspiration to drop from the sky, gather raw material. You will need to find material that is both specific (describe your subject matter in minute detail, identify it's quirky bits, identify what kind of audience it relates to) and general (this is an ongoing process of absorbing info about life, day to day)
2. Study and analyse all the facts you've gathered so you understand them. Scan your facts and see what hits you as interesting. Select 2 facts and put them together. Ideally, link a specific fact about your subject matter, with a general fact about the way we live in a new combination. Write down any weird and wonderful combinations that pop into your head, no matter how incomplete. Try different combinations until you feel like something is working.
3. Put the problem to one side and take a break with something stimulating - go to the movies, read some poetry, listen to music, read a detective story. Now you are stimulating your unconscious to come up with an idea.
4. At this stage, an idea should appear!
5. Now you need to work on this idea, and take it one step further - sculpt it, adapt it (like tailoring a suit to fit), work on any elements that feel awkward - so it's finally a practical and useful solution to your initial problem.