Remember those lame psychic cards that Dr. Venkman used to woo his student at the beginning of Ghostbusters? They looked like this:

Turns out they’re called “Zener cards,” and I’ve found that, whenever my brain is stuck on what to try next with a layout, thinking of these cards can be darn helpful. They’re especially helpful when photos, themes, and other useful content are unavailable or non-applicable. They help get my brain back to some fundamental building blocks that I can lean on for support in time of need. If you’ve ever needed to “design in a vacuum,” you know what I mean.

Here’s a typical example. Last week, my employer (Level 3) asked me to come up with a design for a vinyl pull-up banner-stand that would be ported around to various trade shows for the next couple years. In order to serve strictly as a corporate identifier that could retain compatibility with any show we might attend, the banner-stand would have to rely strictly on our limited palette of three corporate colors (two of which are black and “silver,” ha!), the Level 3 logo, and not much else. No photos, no text, nothing too fun. This needed to be as generic as humanly possible for maximum compatibility with a maximum number of trade shows.

It crossed my mind to just slap the logo on there and call it done, but our logo is *very* horizontal, and these banner-stands are *very* vertical. What to do? Zener cards to the rescue!

Envisioning the “cross” or “plus” shape in the Zener cards reminded me that pesky vertical shapes can be broken up into sections to accommodate horizontal regions. And the circle reminded me that Level 3 had recently adopted “the iconic circle” as one of its corporate identity elements. Meanwhile, the shapes added altogether reminded me that background textures need not be based in photography… The backgrounds themselves can consist of iconic shapes, too, with gentle changes in color applied to create a texture.

So there you have it.

All the reviewers liked it. Done! Thanks Mr. Zener!