“Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack” is a card game that works like a “creative workshop in a box”. It can be used as an oracle or to make your thinking more flexible in a stuck situation.
The Whack Pack is based on the idea that sometimes you need a “light blow to the back of the head” to be nudged out of familiar thought patterns that prevent you from looking at things in a new, fresh way.
The deck consists of 64 cards, each with a creative strategy on it – outlined in a few sentences and a drawing. The whole set is divided into four groups of 16 cards each, assigned to four roles that we go through in a creative process: Researcher, Artist, Judge and Warrior. These roles are borrowed from Roger von Oech’s book “The Creative Kick/A Kick In The Seat Of The Pants.” However, the deck can be used without knowledge of this book as well as another book by the author entitled “A Whack On The Side Of The Head”.
In von Oech’s multimind method, you slip successively into the roles of researcher, artist, judge, and warrior. This is how you find, process, evaluate and fight for ideas. When they are looking for new information, you become the researcher. When you shape your material into new ideas, you become an artist. When you test an idea for its merit, you become the judge. When you put your ideas into action, you become a warrior. These four roles are your creative team for developing and executing new ideas.
You can simply use the “Whack Pack” as a quarry for random finds among creativity techniques, or conduct downright games alone or with a team with the cards. Challenge yourself with the cards when working on a current problem.
The Card Deck is available in English only.
