Where do ideas come from?: Idea generation in the graphic design process

Everything starts with an idea. In the field of graphic design, idea generation plays a critical role in the problem solving process. The graphic designer's idea generation process is a personal and unique process, as each individual's mind works in different ways and the factors that trigger creative thoughts vary. It can be said that there are a number of unique factors in this process, such as designer's past experiences, cultural background, artistic influences and personal interests. How the designer perceives the problem, processes the information, and what paths dessigner follows when producing solutions are shaped by these elements. In this thesis, the basic production processes that guide the designer's adventure of finding ideas in such a subjective process and the brain mechanisms that operate in the background and manage these processes are examined. In the first part of the thesis, the concept of idea is first emphasized. The topics of what an idea is, how it affects life, how it is handled in philosophy, and in what situations it acquires its creative feature are discussed. In the second part, the issue of how first any idea and then the creative idea arises in the mind is examined together with various researches from the field of neuroscience. In the third chapter, the progress of the graphic design process from the problem definition phase to the feedback phase is focused on, before focusing on the idea generation process. Afterwards, the idea generation phase begins with the first placement of the problem in the mind, the methods and processes of searching for ideas in the physical environment, generating ideas by establishing connections between concepts, getting stuck on a single design idea as one of the frequently encountered problems, eureka, which expresses the moment when the solution suddenly comes to mind while not working on the idea, and the last one. In this section, the issues of the designer's individual criticism of the completed design product are discussed.