Is the first stage of the creed of ingenuity and self-reliance known as Bootstrap—some people say. Others tend to think of it more as life before Bootstrapping. In any event, as the prefix suggests, this part's not the nitty gritty. It's the casting about -- which is different from searching -- and the laying awake at night -- which is different from not being able to sleep. It's the stubbing of the big toe and dammit, the sense that there's got to be better way than business as usual.

Before you go off and chase your dreams, it's the deciding that chasing your dreams is the thing to do. And really, there isn't much more to say about Pre Ideation than that.

So I knew immediately that this was going to be a one-word sticker, but which one? Ultimately, I chose

"Awaken" because, if the word has an agenda, it's purely in support of that which is new. Perhaps as much as any sticker in this series—even the Valley of Death one—the typography is the message here.

I wanted to say Awaken the way you hear before you're really awake. I was also thinking something Greek or Runic, to appropriate a dose of the timelessness of the Hero's Journey. I discovered the delightfully named "Archilogicaps" at my favorite font site, dafont.com. The wonderful, yet subtle, wearing of the lettering isn't a Photoshop effect, but a vector feature of the typography. By the way, the architectural term for the faded image of an old carving is "palimpsest."

That sounds like a word somebody said to me in a dream. (Next)