Many times as a web designer/artist, we get designers block. I’m sure you can agree that when you get it, it sucks. A lot of my effort is spent to avoid designer’s block and create an environment where I feel that I can design to my utmost potential. I have found a few things which I consider to be helpful when designing.
Watch artistic movies (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Etc.)
Sometimes you need creative fuel from an external source. Turn on a movie that is heavily influenced by some sort of admirable style. Look at the way the the Shuttle Tyderiums lines flow so gracefully, look at the color schemes on the characters, ships, whatever. I think going to a different media other than what you are working on is a better idea that going to the same. A lot of times I will pull up 5 websites I want mine to be like and be influenced by design elements from them all. I really feel that to be truly unique on a project, you need to pull yourself away from all of the design cliche’s and stereotypes and put yourself into something new.
Get plenty of sleep.
A frazzled designer is a bad designer. Make sure you get plenty of sleep. None of this running on 1 hour of sleep the night before. I have found at those points I think I’m really “in the zone”, but in fact I’m not quite working up to par. I will think I have some sweet design at 4am, then I wake up at 9am and look at it and it looks ghetto. Get plenty of sleep, your body needs it, but don’t oversleep! The idea is to get yourself into your optimum condition, conducive to design.
Coffee
I’m not talking about guzzling 3 pots before 8am. I heard somewhere something like “Coffee fuels the creative soul” and I believe it. At my times where I really don’t have an inkling of an idea of what to design, I put myself in a non-distractive environment and curl up with a steaming cup of Joe and most times, you’re right, it does the trick.
Eliminate Distractions
Seriously. All this TV going on in the background and things going on everywhere never helped. Get in your comfort zone. Spend time to create a peaceful working environment. Possibly one distraction: music, is best. Turn on your favorite tunes, the ones that really get you into the zone. But keep it at that!
Take a Break
You may have deadlines and stress, but you need a break. Creativity isn’t something that can be forced. You have to force yourselft to take a break. Get out in the fresh air, get outside. Even a 15 minute break will do great things for you. When you do, it will free your mind and get creative ideas flowing again. I swear that people get into design “infinite loops”. You get stuck on an idea and even if that idea is crap, you keep messing with that idea over and over, even if it is heading nowhere.
Any advice from you?
I would disagree with you on several points… Or, let me rephrase that one – for me, several of your points are invalid…
I’m really most creative at night – so what I’ve done recently, is: I’ve reversed my biorythm, so that I sleep during the daytime, and get up at about 1am… – Fuel up on extreme amounts of caffeine (coffee, Coke, iced coffee, anything) so to get through the part of the day you need to stay awake (i.e school/work) and repeat.
Avoiding distractions doesn’t work either… Yes, you might get annoyed by background noise, and hence turn it off, but in order to /get/ creative, I think you should go and /get/ inspiration from other sources…
Now, I suppose you’ve read Cameron Moll’s “Good designers copy, great designers steal” – which proves my point… Now, I’m not saying, nor did Cameron, that you should go rip off someone else’s work in total (if that were the case, I suppose I would’ve gone off and copied your source code long ago…) – but c’mon if inspiration wasn’t one of the most important means of creativity, we wouldn’t have had CSS Zen Garden, would we?
I won’t argue with you on the matter of movies – I’ve argued too long with Kai ( http://stibbert.com ) on that subject – but I’d say that genre and “arty-ness” are unrelated issues in the matter… The Pianist has inspired me more than any film, and isn’t exactly SciFi, nor that arty, It’s just one hell of a good film…
But hey, that’s just me… (Dam naggit, that’s a long comment…)
I love reading people who comment with heart. People who don’t agree for agreeings sake. You know? Ever had a situation where a group was trying to come to a consensus and it seems that everyone agrees? I learned in psychology that when a large group of people are trying to brainstorm, that many times they converge to a decision to quickly. I think it was called “group convergence” or somethings like that. Anyhow, the idea is that in smaller groups, people feel more individual responsibility and will speak up their opinion. Blogging creates this sort of freedom as well.
Anyway, I like to hear from people who feel differently than me. My first question to you is how do you go about “stealing” design without the ripoff of the whole work? Are you talking about stealing certain design elements?
As for your movie comment, I would agree. By Sci-fi or arty, I didn’t mean only Sci-fi or arty. In fact, my point was more aimed at pulling yourself away from the media that is the web and to take inspiration from another media.
I think its cool that you can work under such distractions, it just so happens that I cannot easily work under many distractions. How much caffeine do you take in? I am interested to see what sorts of caffeine you mix as well. Are we talking 2 pots o’ coffee, a caramel macchiato, a monster, then 3 red bulls to polish off the evening?
By the way, the pianist was rad movie. Awesome. :)
i concur… i do my best work at night. I am only half-steam during the day. Caffeine is one of my friends, even though I’m breaking free of that demon. Oh and nicotine is fantastic for sparking my juices. You remember Rogie, 3am, college, office, chain smoke, GENIUS! Seriously, if I can be put in an environment of:
- 10:00 PM or later
- Caffeine
- Endless Supply of Cigs
- A computer
- The wanton distraction of a UT2k4 (or Far Cry lan action with Rogie) match ever couple of hours
I would achieve miracles. Not to say that all my product would be fantastic, but I assure you my time would be productive. I think I’ll move to the dark side of the moon.
oh, BTW, I think i’m going to start only sleeping a max of 5 hours a night. This will give me more night hours :)
Haha! Rofl. Dood, I love this quote “The wanton distraction of a UT2k4″. I love those memories of gaming while we were supposed to working on our finals! Thank God for Tim Tsai eh…hehe… ;)
Anyhow, pain, good luck on that whole sleeping 5 hours thing. I’ve tried it. It sucks…hardcore. However, it sounds like you’ve got a healthy diet planned bro. Looking forward to seeing you look like crap. Actually bro, I’d get more sleep if I were you. Its pretty bad when your friends want to play videogames and you say you are too tired. N00b.
ummmmm, why u gotta h8?
Llamas are very curious animals and Winslow Homer has caught this perfectly in
Some say that they do their best work at night.. maybe so, but everytime I try to create something at night, I get the feeling “this is awesome”.. But when I wake up I can’t believe that I spend 6-7 hours on that crap. I produce my best stuff between 6.am to lunch. And take the afternoon to reply emails and take phonecalls.
Totally pijon, It’s good to hear from someone who has experienced the same thing that I have. I totally get that “this is awesome” feeling at night when I’m exhausted late at night. I think its best to always design, wait, review, revise and so on. Just keep building on your ideas always taking what was best from your previous design. I believe that there is always some good things in a lot of each design. It just has to be refined.
Thanks alot
Take a Break..will help me..need 2 implement it..living with that felling till date :P