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Hooray For Big Ideas! Post-it Big Pads

We mentioned back in our top 10 post on designer organization tools that you chose Post-it Notes as one of your favorite tools to help you stay organized. You can consider me part of that group, too, being as though I’ve got at least five stuck to my monitor right now. You can actually see them in this photo, along with my handy Karim Rashid Pebble dispenser. So when the Post-it Brand asked me to come to SXSW to check out their booth and celebrate the launch of the new Post-it Big Pads, you know I was all, “heck yes!” Well, now that I’m back, I’ve had some time to think about how I could actually use these gigantic pads, and I even asked you, the Design Milk team, and a few other creatives to come up with ideas on how to create on a larger scale – create big. In this day and age of design, you’ve got to go big (idea-wise) or go home, right?

The Design Milk team chatted about how we’d use these. First of all, I still keep a notebook on my desk to do simple math or jot something down while I’m on the phone, so the Post-it Big Pad could totally replace that, and also function as a mousepad or blotter. Besides the obvious ideas like a to-do list, we came up with the following:

– An enormous wall calendar with one Post-it Note for every day of the month

– 12 of them on a wall, in a timeline fashion and use them for monthly goals

– For project management, this is a great way to visualize a timeline – a giant, visual gantt chart, perhaps?

– A sketch a day, similar to my Shape A Day project

– For funny portrait artists – have someone drawing portraits on the pads

– Film editing. Before editing any files, you could use these to storyboard your video

– Having seen tons of designer’s offices where sketches were hung up all over the walls, designers could use these to sketch and no longer need tape or corkboards to hold up their projects

– Temporary, removable artwork for renters

– To help visualize art on your walls before you hang anything

– When designing apps, you could use the regular-sized Post-it Notes on top of Big Pads

– Assigning project duties or scheduling complex projects

– I’d put one on the back of my door to remind me of the most important things before I leave the house:

Besides pranks and passive aggressive parking notes on cars ;) you guys also came up with a ton of really creative ideas when we asked you on Instagram and Facebook. Here are our favorites:

– Lauren said on our Facebook page that she’d use them as a “weekly planner and a family chore chart”.

– @aureliatronquet on Instagram says “Use it as an all around DIY creative ‘game on the go’ kit . Lay then down for hopscotch, stick up for a game of pin the donkey, see who can get the most creative for a fashion catwalk (I see yellow false eyelashes and a frilly number). Have a post it picnic, yellow table cloths, paper cones for popcorn let the paper games begin!”

– @juicyloop on Instagram says “Perfect for kids’ doodles (no fridge magnet required). Perfect for subtle work reminders (DO THIS NOW). Perfect for forgetful partners (Milk!). Perfect for giant post-it doodles (a #dailygift from colleagues).”

– @fallengirl on Instagram would use them for story boarding.

– Emmanuel Dela Cruz on Facebook said he’d make a wall Mondrian.

We asked a few of our favorite designers, including Phase Design and blackLAB architects.

Reza Feiz of Phase Design mentioned perhaps creating a fun interactive gallery event where walls start bare and there is a huge stack of Post It Big Pads in the center of the gallery. Guests are invited, and upon arrival each person gets 10 minutes to sketch and draw on their Post-It Note and hang it up on the wall. By the end of the show, the gallery would be covered everyone’s creations, and the show begins. (I think we should do this!)

Reza also thought it would be fun to use one of each size and color, stacked on top of each other, to create a very affordable Josef Albers-type painting… and, believe it or not, I totally did this at the Post-it Booth last week before I even saw their email (great minds!):

blackLAB, who have created some really awesome wall installations such as this one made of 44,000 golf tees or this one made of 12,000 colored pencils, say:

Having worked with larger mosaics made of small elements, we did think about the textural quality of Post-it Notes as a material. There are some really nice art projects in this vein. Using these as a simple, temporary wall coverings has potential. The larger sizes would have an interesting, less ‘busy’ effect – and it’s nice that the 11″ x 11″ and 22″ x 22″ are multiples of a modular size. The sheer size of the new Post-it Big Pads did lead us to wonder about the potential for sketching at 1:1 scale. Imagine using the larger ones to cover a floor or a wall of a space that is to be designed – and drawing out a kitchen layout, or trying out some furniture arrangements. Just peel and re-stick to test out different configurations.

Post-it Big Pads are available in three giant sizes and eye-popping colors, making sure your big ideas have a place to land:

11″ x 11″ in Electric Yellow

15″x15″ in Fuchsia

And the big mamma jamma is Electric Blue at 22″ x 22″

How would you use Post-it Big Pads? Leave your creative ideas in the comments here or on Twitter using hashtag #createbig.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.