Thinking outside the box.

This is a term that basically means, not really answering the brief.
You should try it if you are anyway employed (or trying to be employed) in any creative industry.
I am about to try it today, right now, as soon as I get off my backside and actually do a bit of "work".
When I was at college, there was this guy from Hong Kong on our illustration course. When they gave out the brief, most people went away and researched it meticulously before coming up with what was referred to as a "solution".
Pak took a different approach. It may have had something to do with his perfunctory command of the English language. It may have been that he was a genius on a par with Pablo bloody Picasso.
Pak just went away and drew whatever the hell he felt like. His drawings were always delicate. They had that bleedy watercolour quality, overlaid with a bold, confident ink line.
They were never less than fantastic, any more than they bore any relation to the brief.
Some people used to complain at our presentations, "But he hasn't answered the brief!"
It didn't matter. At the end of the course, Pak got a first class honours degree. Maybe he was on to something. To hell with the brief. Just go for broke on the illustration. If you put the hours in, that will carry you through. Thinking too hard about the content may, in essence, dilute the end result. Also, an image that seems not to relate too much to the subject is often more arresting than something too obvious.
It makes you look twice and think, "Hang on. What has that got to do with that?" And BANG! You've captured attention.
How often have you seen a full page advert for a car in the paper which features a picture of...the car, and you just turn over the page without hardly looking at it? If they had a picture of a man standing on a balcony wrestling with a fishing rod, trying to reel in a wellie boot, you would stop for a minute and think, "Hang on, what's this all about?"
And you would take time to read the crappy copy.
"Do you yearn for the open road? The freedom to make your dreams come alive? Or do you just want a car that will get you into work and back home at the end of the day, with a radio that allows you to listen to Womens' Hour while you sit in traffic wondering whether you should bother buying a present for some distant relative you hardly ever see, or just send them a card?"
Buy a Volvo, you boring boring, but sensible person, or buy a Porsche, you sexually inadequate rugby rugby rugby rugby rugby loving shouty person."
Hey! It's up to you.