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If the cliché of "a picture is worth a thousands words" is true, then as designers we are faced with the quagmire of creating a picture that says the right one thousand words. We live or die by the images we produce; we are paid to communicate visually.

But during my creative process, I find nothing more comforting than burying myself in words. Michael McGinn, the guru formerly behind Designframe and who now heads Michael McGinn Design Office, once gave me some sage advice: "Buy a thesaurus. Really—trust me." Years later, I can finally appreciate his insight. Every word has a connotation, an image associated it, a sort of archetypical word-association-game response. Those images that spring to mind are really the raw material that fuels my creative process.

When I receive a brief, I normally begin noodling around simply by writing down lists and lists and lists of words- some of them quite literal to the brief, others quite peripheral. (I remember once when working with a scuba diving instructor I had a list that included "Oxygen Tank/Ocean/Seinfeld", because I remembered Kramer's cologne he designed inspired by the beach.) But after I have gathered these hundreds of words, and consequently hundreds of little archetypical images, my brain begins cross-pollinating them to see if they can mate and breed a brand new idea. After years of trying anything to get an idea—this is my Ol' Reliable—it flat out never fails me.

I recently completed an identity for a networking group. Prior to our first meeting, they provided me with a white paper of the most jargon-y business speak nonsense I had ever read. The group sounded like a bunch of stiffs. So at my first branding meeting, I whipped out these boring, symmetrical corporate nothing logos, and they were shocked. "These don't capture the spirit of who we are." I almost laughed. "Have you read this brief?", I quipped. She quickly responded, "Oh that. We just had to write that to push this job through the system. That isn't us." Once the branding committee provided me with the right words, the unique words, the quirky words, they were quite pleased with the resulting identity.

This process needn't be restricted to just using words to get to the pictures; it can be an end in and of itself. Words are extraordinarily powerful—little memes that can communicate with sucker-punch intensity. Consequently, using this technique for copy writing also works brilliantly. Simply writing "Auschwitz" instead of showing camps can be equally powerful (sorry for the sucker-punch). Our brains do the work, and pull out their own powerful images.

We shouldn't find this surprising. The ubiquitous post-movie review of "The book was soooo much better!" continually proves the power of words over images. Our brains are so extraordinarily colorful and inventive that our mind's eye can produce infinitely better images than any graphic designer, director, or artist. Maurice Sendak, of Where the Wild Things Are fame, acknowledged that when he illustrates a book, he makes sure the pictures DON'T match the words. "That's stupid, the picture should be telling me new information, not what I already know." Words have a life of their own; the best illustrators just know how to heighten the experience by adding new data.

According to all the reports, our Pavlovian brains have grown completely numb to the printed word thanks to the A.D.H.D. programming of MTV et al. Sociologists, anthropologists and the average joe's of the world seem to agree: we are traveling with "ludicrous speed" towards a future of communication akin to the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt. But in my world, the word will always wear the crown. Emoticons be damned! :P

Mark Twain once noted, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." For designers, he couldn't possibly be more correct.