It comes naturally to feel, but sometimes, we experience feelings that seem indescribable at first. It’s the general mood that triggers an emotion, a vibe. It’s hard to sew such an abstract state into a conceptual idea. But by breaking down basic senses, I learned how to invent ideas based on the atmosphere.

Once, I walked down the trail with an oregano-scattered mountain stretching up on the left and the sea with a clean horizon on the right. And I suddenly didn’t have thoughts. I felt the atmosphere of the place — I heard the waves crashing the cliffs, I saw the thick air distorting the landscape from the warmth of the midday sun, and I felt my mind become clear and open. I soaked in the ambiance of the space — no unnecessary noise.

This short moment I described is a memory, which I can now recreate with words, but at the time, I didn’t think of descriptions. All that came from my mouth then was, “Oh, that is so beautiful; look at the water color; do you smell the oregano?” — in awe expressions based on basic senses.

So, when thinking about coming up with an idea, I first try to visualize an atmosphere. I try to narrow it down to most ground senses, asking myself first — what do I want to feel? Then, I remind myself of things that spark this feeling.

An image is a puzzle of components that interact with our perception, and the more we experience, the more receptive we become. The art of noticing them helps distinguish which components spark a certain feeling. So to give an example, recently, especially after stressful days, my heart has gone to my childhood — to the slow cottage life I’ve had a chance to experience. I tried to remind myself — “what did I see; what did I smell?”. The memory that started surfacing through all my senses was the smell of freshly washed linen clipped with wooden pins on a rope, lightly swiveled by the delicate wind. And I knew this was exactly the atmosphere I wanted to portray.

From here, the road is “easy.” Putting the puzzles together: linen, rope, wooden clips, all in the scene of a cottage. The hardest thing is sometimes just taking a moment to really find what we are looking for, as we are straight away seeking a ready idea that already includes the whole set of puzzle pieces. But we forget about the craftsman/craftswoman who makes the pieces. So in this example, the creators are our senses.

It is a sunny Saturday morning, and it is the slowest the life gets.

How to Create Ideas: Visualizing Atmosphere