So for my first “Concepting” project (which doesn’t seem to be a word in the dictionary according to spell check…) I must create clever advertisements for Baskin-Robbins hard candy. So far so good. I’ve got good material – it’s both ice cream and candy… who can argue with those? I’ve felt pretty good about the various head lines and images that could later become a creative ad, following the brainstorming suggestions from my Professor (who insists I call him by his first name – which goes against all of my upbringing, unless I call him “Mr. Glenn” like in Sunday school). Anyway, I digress. The next brainstorming technique I am trying involves looking at the product from different angles to see what else it could be. Problem. My product is circular, to get more technical, a cylindrical prism. The circle is by far the least talented shape in existence. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things that are circular, but it can never become anything other than than. A pie chart? Still a circle. A Polka Dot? Still a circle. A flaming hoop through which an endangered tiger leaps? Still a circle. Yes, all interesting ways to use a circle… but not anything transformational. But a rectangle. That is someone different. Use two of them and you create a treasure chest. When people see that they don’t think, “hey, those are two rectangles!” They think, “hey, that’s a hell of a lot of money. Now I can afford to pay off my second mortgage!” Some of you may argue, “but the young child at the circus watches that endangered tiger jump through the flaming hoop and ignores its shape”. I challenge this argument. The young child says, “Daddy! Look at the tiger jump through the circle on FIRE!”. Case and point. The circle is the underachieving stepchild of the shape world – for goodness sakes, it isn’t even a polygon!

After further investigation, I have discovered that the Baskin-Robbins website is incorrect. The candy is actually a rounded-rectangle. Great. Give the rectangle a handicap.