How do you develop media concepts that are both creative and feasible?

1 Identify your goals and audience

Before you start brainstorming ideas, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your media project and who you want to reach. What is the purpose of your media? Is it to inform, entertain, persuade, educate, or inspire? Who are you targeting? What are their needs, interests, preferences, and challenges? How will your media benefit them? Having a clear goal and audience will help you focus your creativity and avoid wasting time and resources on irrelevant or inappropriate ideas.

2 Research and analyze existing media

One of the best ways to develop your media concepts is to research and analyze existing media that are similar or related to your project. You can learn from the successes and failures of other media producers, as well as identify gaps and opportunities in the market. Look for media that have the same or similar goals, audiences, genres, formats, styles, and themes as your project. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are their unique selling points? How do they engage and satisfy their audiences? How can you improve or differentiate your media concept from them?

3 Generate and diversify your ideas

Once you have done your research and analysis, you can start generating your own media concepts. There are many techniques and tools to help you brainstorm ideas, such as mind maps, word associations, prompts, questions, scenarios, sketches, and prototypes. The key is to generate as many ideas as possible, without judging or filtering them at this stage. You want to explore different angles, perspectives, and possibilities for your media concept. You also want to diversify your ideas, by combining, modifying, or expanding them in different ways.

4 Evaluate and select your ideas

After you have generated a lot of ideas, you need to evaluate and select the ones that are most creative and feasible for your media project. You can use various criteria and methods to assess your ideas, such as relevance, originality, value, clarity, coherence, scope, and feasibility. You can also test your ideas with your target audience, peers, or experts, and get feedback and suggestions. You want to choose the ideas that best match your goals and audience, that stand out from the existing media, and that are realistic and achievable within your resources and constraints.

6 Review and revise your concepts

The final step in developing your media concepts is to review and revise them, based on your own evaluation and feedback from others. You want to check that your concepts are still aligned with your goals and audience, that they are still creative and original, and that they are still feasible and realistic. You also want to look for any errors, gaps, or weaknesses in your concepts, and fix them accordingly. You want to polish and improve your concepts, until you are confident and satisfied with them.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?