“My ideas come little by little”: how graphic professionals manage ideas

To understand and support creative work, we need to look at its manifestation in everyday professional practice. We do so by focusing on the core activity of capturing and managing material representations of ideas, i.e. idea management. Starting from previous empirical research in other domains, we devise a theoretical framework and extend it in the domain of Graphics. Combining a qualitative survey (n=48) and in-depth interviews (n=15), we look for unexpected themes that emerge only among graphic professionals. We expand the existing knowledge in four main ways: we identify what makes a graphic idea \textit{good} compared to other domains, we observe that practitioners balance conflicting creative identities with consequences on their idea management needs, that graphic ideas are sculpted out of inspirational material, and that creative control is negotiated with clients and collaborators.