Dimension four is the lowest dimension where smooth and topological manifolds can differ; any difference between these categories is known as exotica. In particular, a smooth 4-manifold is \emph{exotic} if there is another smooth 4-manifold which is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to it. There is a wealth of literature, mostly written between 1983 and 2008, on producing exotic manifolds, but the techniques pioneered in this era can be hard to use in practice. I will discuss joint work with triangle locals Adam Levine and Tye Lidman in which we give some new techniques for producing exotic 4-manifolds.