It’s surprising, but it’s true: even the most creative of individuals can have their creativity run dry. We know it’s tough to imagine a genius like Da Vinci living even a day without any artistic inspiration, but it happens to the best of us; this so-called “artist’s block” is often a part of the creative cycle, and most of the time, there’s nothing to do but to live through it. Its duration varies from person to person, but we all know it’s not a phase we can afford to spiral into forever– especially if you’re a graphic designer with a lot of pending jobs queued up.
Thankfully, quite like memory, our creativity can be “jogged”, or, at least, nudged in the right direction. Listed below are a couple of tips and tricks you can apply if you ever find yourself in need of a creativity boost.
Watch Videos Productively
Watching “productive” videos such as those covering the ever-familiar design trends and design tutorials will definitely help cover the technical aspect of creative learning and push you in the right direction. However, watching such videos with a receptive brain versus a drained one bears varied results, often resulting with the latter getting the short end of the stick.
Watching videos “productively”, however, is different. You can watch any video online, but put on your designer glasses while you watch. Pay attention to the mood and emotion of the video. What design elements and visual cues worked to form these feelings and ideas? It’s best you take note of them. After watching a few more videos, you may get a few new perspectives on how to approach some new designs, compared to when you simply tried learning with the technical stuff all at once.
Go On a Website Hopping Spree
This tip is similar to the “watch videos productively” one, except, instead of watching dynamically moving pictures and making visual observations and inferences from them, you’re going to hop through online experiences. Now, there are two ways you can go about this. Depending on the websites you end up on and what you think of them, you can either note every decision the sites’ designers got right, or you can note the changes you have to do to make them better. Your brain’s creativity is tapped in either exercise. In the chance that your creative energy does not return after a long and winding website hopping session, then maybe you should…
Talk to Other Creatives
Let’s face it: as designers, though we may have design teams or we may work closely with clients, we still have this sense of individuality, a sense of pride in the original ideas we pitch in into any work of art we commit to creating. That isn’t completely wrong– we are creatives, after all, and that’s how most of us are built.
However, diving into discussions with other creatives opens your eyes to new perspectives you wouldn’t have seen on your own. Not only that, engaging with other creatives opens possibilities for future collaborations, and for helping each other out with clients via referral. With the internet at its peak, it’s very easy to get connected with other people. Jump into forums, join servers, even go through graphic design blogs and discuss things in comment sections! No man is an island, especially with art. There is so much creative energy to go around, and a lot of people are more than willing to share.
Do “Other” Creative Things
Last but not the least, doing “other” creative things will help jog your brain’s artsy juices. The logic behind this is: you may be burnt out from graphic design, but that doesn’t mean you’re burnt out from writing fanfiction, or making music, or even doing origami. Spend a good hour or two just creating without limit, all with this other creative hobby you have. If you don’t have another creative hobby, perhaps now is the time to try a new one! Trust us, taking a break from one creative task and taking on another for the purpose of relaxation will do wonders to jogging your creative juices.
