In Praise of Stupid Ideas

It’s funny how important it is to do work that doesn’t matter in a commercial sense. As a brand designer I’m usually working on commercial projects, helping businesses become brands or create campaigns. For me, this needs to be balanced with the stupid, silly ideas that seem laughable in the workplace. Like, what’s the point in that? you might ask, from a commercial point of view. But the high effort these silly ideas take is exactly what makes them valuable.

For Christmas 2025, the left-field idea was a Christmas piñata. What made it good was the tension in the idea itself. A piñata and Christmas are both festive, both built around a group of people and a pile of lollies, so they belong together. But nobody does this. There’s something absurd about grown adults gathering on Christmas Day to beat a papier-mâché figure with a stick. Constructing it the way my Dad did when we were kids, with flour-and-water glue, a balloon and newspaper, and then destroying it in about thirty seconds, is what makes it better again.

Of course any idea is only as good as the execution, and it had to look as good as it was festive. So I chose the Grinch, a Christmas character you can feel fine about hitting with a broomstick. I papier-mâchéd it, sprayed it, and cut coloured paper for the face. I filled it with the usual candy but added scratch-off tickets to get my adult brothers properly invested.

The stupid idea of Christmas 2025 was a huge hit (sorry, I had to). It also taught me something about what these personal projects are actually for. They’re not really about the making. They’re about giving people something to do together that nobody expected. To top it off, a Christmas guest, Emma, won $700 on one of the scratch-offs. My brothers and I were filthy.