The ‘creative leap’, in which a novel concept emerges—perhaps quite suddenly—as a potential design solution, is widely regarded as a characteristic feature of creative design, and creative thinking more widely. The investigation reported here is based on an example of a ‘creative leap’ which occurred during a recorded laboratory protocol study of the activity of a small design team. The characteristics and context of this ‘creative leap’ are reconstructed from the recorded material, and the commonly accepted procedures underlying generic descriptive models of creative design are employed to provide further insight into the example. Some observations are also made of potential implications for computer modelling of creative design. The perceptual act underlying creative insight in design is seen to be not so much a ‘leap’, but more akin to ‘bridging’ between problem space and solution space. This fits with the appositional nature of design thinking, in that the bridging concept embodies satisfactory relationships between problem and solution.