In this article, the author discusses how to teach students to think creatively. In the author's search for a way to teach students that there are multiple approaches to visual problems, she found inspiration from advertising. The author asserts students first need permission to explore their latent ideas, and second, they need the tools to organize, revise, and edit what they find. She also points out that it is important to the creative process for students to think and re-think before drawing. Included in this article is a description of the basic components of a lesson plan on word associations and thumbnail sketches to demonstrate this point.