Having established the general stylistic approach, you will have left the client and returned to your studio with the intention of creating some of the best designs ever. But where do you start? A blank computer screen or a new pad of layout paper can sometimes seem very intimidating, and your initial enthusiasm may suddenly evaporate to be replaced by frustration and gloom.

The answer is not to spend too much time on any single aspect of the design if it is not fruitful. Start by flipping through a magazine, book or website, looking for inspiration.
Doodle on your layout pad, creating mind maps or listing word associations; look at layout options perhaps using a five-column grid but leaving the first column blank; or take a look through the type catalogue, messing around with a design feature such as a heading or quote. Cutting out blank shapes to represent pictures and dummy text and moving them around, unencumbered by a grid, may help. If you are free to choose the format, try folding sheets of paper into different configurations. Sometimes, in an advertisement for example, the layout may be built around a conceptual idea, and the resulting design may have an inevitability about it. It is vital that you keep your work fluid long enough to avoid shutting off possible ideas.

A common mistake is to finalize the grid too soon. It should be the skeleton on which the design is fashioned. If you start out with a kangaroo's anatomy it is extremely difficult to create a horse. Eventually, however, the embryonic design will emerge.