About 5 years ago I started posting designs with the hashtag #stackingammo and a bunch of friends and followers asked me what it means
I thought I might break it down in hopes of sharing the adventure of the journey

First a disclaimer,

Stacking ammo is a term used by one of my favorite rappers Eminem, In an interview on 60 mins where he was flipping through what seems like a scrap of papers with lines of rhymes that have no obvious connection or completeness. He was explaining to the interviewer, that he goes through it and some of his songs were born from those “scraps”.

The Terms

Stacking ammo is working on ideas that may not necessarily have direct connexion
It comes from an analogy of rap completions aka battles so the ideas become ammo you shoot with

How I use the term

Stacking ammo for me is working on ideas that don’t have a direct connection with any client work at hand it’s an effort to try out a design approach or style to express ideas or experiment with them

Why I stopped using other terms

You might be reading this and saying” oh so like self-initiated projects or expression projects ”
Yes and no, all those terms are right but they don’t encapsulate the whole meanings behind the process
It is a hands-on preparation for future challenges the more you stack up ammo ( practice) the more you can whip up original concepts that work then and there

Ok, All that’s well, Why should anyone care?
If you are a designer you know most of the projects appear last minute, and you’re expected to bring your A-game then and there, to Think on your feet. The ideas that pop into your head at the moment are directly related to the ideas you have tried out and experimented with.

So, the more you practice the more you have ammo for the battle of communicating ideas eloquently and with speed

My Journey

Powered by his songs and discipline of turning tragedy into triumph I created a lot of projects some of which became a jumping point to client projects.

You can take a look at one of the projects I did stacking on top of the color palette,

I’m really passionate about the concept and I think I will come back to it time and time again, I hope this introduces the idea