MDIA5021 Chap.1 Creativity, Ideas and Defamiliarization
Creativity, Ideas and Defamiliarization
Creativity in this chapter is purposeful idea-making. The course frames a useful creative idea as novel enough to interrupt habitual attention and useful enough to solve a communication problem. Conceptual thinking works with relations rather than facts alone. Analogy transfers a shared relation from a familiar source to a target brand problem, while defamiliarization makes an ordinary object or routine noticeable again.
The analytical task is to explain the audience's creative leap: what expectation is interrupted, which cues connect the unusual presentation to the proposition, and why that connection changes interpretation. A surprising object without a recoverable relation is only odd; a clear claim with no surprise may be ignored.
Strong work holds relevance and novelty together, checks alternative readings and avoids claiming that every audience will make the same association.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Creativity as novel and useful problem-solving
- 02
Conceptual thinking rather than information transfer
- 03
Habitualisation and renewed attention
- 04
Defamiliarization as purposeful interruption
- 05
Source and target analogues
- 06
The shared relation in analogy
- 07
The audience's creative leap
- 08
Proposition fit and counter-reading
Worked example · free
Test a lighthouse analogy for a study-space app
- +1Identify the source relation: a lighthouse guides someone through uncertainty toward a safe destination.
- +1Identify the target: students need help locating an available place to study after hours.
- +1Explain the audience inference: the app can provide orientation when suitable spaces feel hidden.
- +1State the boundary: the promise is credible only if the service supplies current availability rather than a static directory.
Key terms
- Creative idea
- A novel and useful conceptual response to a communication problem. It must do more than decorate information.
- Habitualisation
- Reduced attention to a form or routine that has become familiar through repetition.
- Defamiliarization
- Presenting the familiar from an unusual angle so it becomes newly noticeable and open to reinterpretation.
- Source analogue
- The familiar situation or object from which a useful relation is borrowed.
- Target analogue
- The brand, product or audience problem that receives the borrowed relation.
- Creative leap
- The audience's inferred movement from the source relation to the intended target meaning.
Creativity, Ideas and Defamiliarization FAQ
What is the difference between novelty and creativity?
Novelty describes newness or unexpectedness. Creative advertising also requires usefulness: the unusual presentation must help solve the brief, support the proposition and give the intended audience a recoverable path to meaning.
How do I know whether an analogy works?
State the relation shared by source and target, predict the audience inference, and test another plausible reading. If the connection depends on private explanation or imports a false promise, the analogy needs revision.
Why is defamiliarization important?
Familiar advertising forms can be filtered out. Defamiliarization interrupts expectation and renews attention, but it earns strategic value only when viewers can reconnect the interruption to the communication problem.
What loses marks in an analysis of an idea?
Merely listing visible objects, calling an execution creative because it looks different, or naming defamiliarization without explaining the audience mechanism. Strong analysis points to cues and traces the inference back to the brief.
Assessment move
Choose three static advertisements from different categories. For each, write the expected category reading before looking closely, then identify the interruption and state the relation that reconnects it to the proposition. Draw a source-target bridge and test whether the middle relation is conceptual or merely visual. Rewrite any analysis sentence that uses 'creative', 'effective' or 'engaging' without a causal explanation.
Generate a counter-reading and decide which cues make one interpretation more likely. For portfolio work, keep a list of rejected analogies with the criterion they failed: weak relation, wrong audience knowledge, poor brand ownership, misleading promise or no practical route into an execution. This record develops judgement and gives later reflective writing a specific account of how your practice changed.
Run a weekly three-pass drill on one unfamiliar advertisement. In the first pass, allow yourself thirty seconds and record only the expectation that was interrupted. In the second, list every cue that supports the proposed source-target relation, including headline syntax, scale, placement and product evidence.
In the third, make the strongest rival interpretation you can and identify the cue that would decide between the two readings. Finish by redrawing the concept with a different source domain while preserving the same strategic relation. If the new version still communicates the proposition, you have probably identified the transferable idea; if it collapses, the original may depend on decoration.
Store the before-and-after versions beside a short decision note. Over several weeks, sort the notes by recurring failure rather than by campaign category. This makes patterns visible: perhaps you reach too quickly for visual resemblance, rely on private cultural knowledge, or create surprise that the product cannot own. Turn the most common failure into a personal pre-sketch question and use it before the next brief.
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