ABCs of Color

. Roger von Oech, author of A Kick in the Seat of the Pants and A Whack on the Side of the Head, shared this perspective from an advertisement for a library.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

“At your local library they have these arranged in ways that can make you cry, giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder, and understand.

It’s astonishing to see what these twenty-six little marks can do.
In Shakespeare’s hands they became Hamlet. Mark Twain wound them into Huckleberry Finn. James Joyce twisted them into Ulysses. Gibbonpounded them into The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 
John Milton shaped them into Paradise Lost.”

~ Quote taken from an advertisement to promote local libraries.
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One of my favorite approaches to creating trainings is to use the alphabet to shift from a predictable list to concepts I might not consider. For example, simply listing the colors I plan to cover in my Exploring Rainbows course (Red, Yellow, Orange, etc.) tends to limit my thinking. 

​I used the alphabet to capture memories from trips, ideas for articles, brainstorming gift list, planning my garden, visits to museums, my annual gratitude lists, and in this case, workshop concepts.

So for each color of the rainbow, I'm planning to use examples of

• Advertising- how colors are used to impact how we make purchases
• Businesses and Brands 
• Chakras 
• Dining - orange to stimulate the appetite and prompt us to eat quickly and move on (fast foods), red to encourage us to slow down and enjoy (fine dining), and blue to decrease the appetite. Great for dieting. 

Then there are Fairy tales and Folk lore, Gemstones, Global interpretations, Quotes, Songs, Symbolism . . . right now I have 3 or 4 topics for each letter. Six weeks will barely be enough time to cover everything!

The next time you're brainstorming ideas, write down each letter of the alphabet and see what kind of associations occur to you that might not have otherswise! And if you're really feeling industrious, see if you can arrange those 26 little marks to make another book to add to the Library of Congress!