SXSW: After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration
[A panel with Jason Santa Maria, Cameron Moll, Rob Weychert]
- Defining Inspiration
- Finding Inspiration
- Maintaining Inspiration
Inspiration is not influence. Don't be a photocopier!
Inspiration is the sum of your experiences.
See: Pablo Picasso anecdote
Start with History.
See: A History of Graphic Design by Phillip Meggs
Look at everything from cave paintings to digital design.
Look at Born Magazine. It is an attempt to foster collaboration between writers and designers.
Weychert worked with a poet to illustrate and design around a poem about Venice. He wanted to use type to really illustrate the content.
Started with Ventian Old Style. Went to Adobe Jenson and then got to Vendetta. Ended up with a postmodern font that was derived from these early fonts but was clearly of our time.
Turn off your computer!
They both recently took a class in Letterpress. The emotions you get when you pull out a drawer of letterforms is profoundly inspirational. Mixing inks by hand to find the hues that will make your design sing. Experimenting with color and layout and paper, locking type into a press bed, feeling the physical space that these objects occupy is transformative. How often do you really look at the letterforms on the computer?
They decided to do a project that would require setting a forty-line Edgar Allen Poe poem.
Things that would take five minutes on the computer would take hours because of the analog nature of the medium. These constraints were a profound experience.
Jason experimented by making business cards for SXSW. Decided to get big sheets of paper, silkscreen color onto them, printed them with a big inking stamp, and then rounded the corners by hand.
This year he did it again with letterpress. He started with an 8 1/2 × 11 piece of paper and let that guide him a creative solution.
Books are another source of inspiration. A story is being told in the book. An illustrator has tried to represent the story. And then there is the book itself as an object complete with marginalia, bent corners, etc.
Jason tried to design his site around this same idea. Bringing the tactile world into the two-dimensional world is a difficult but inspiring challenge.
Look to comic books like Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware. Everything is done by hand. He writes the story with pictures first and then comes back and adds words.
So how do you maintain inspiration?
It's like grocery shopping, if you don't put your produce in the fridge it won't keep.
There is no inspiration on/off switch. You can make your mind a fertile ground to be inspired when it's ready.
Design is not a thing you do. It's a way of life. Alan Fletcher
See: The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
Be prepared for inspiration.
Catalog inspiration. Use iPhoto to collect images of things that sparked an idea in you. Take pictures of things and keep images of them so you can go back and find them.
Another way to do this is a sketchbook. Use it to keep records of things you see and ideas you have. Use it to bring you back to that moment of inspiration.
Exercise your mind to keep ready for inspiration.
Be a design vigilante.
Every day you are surrounded by horrific design. Why not take it back? Redesign what you see. Redesign the grocery circular or the missing dog sign.
There are puzzles you can do that are less obviously related to design. Crossword puzzles force you to ponder the relationship between words and letters. The way they are constructed forces you to flex your brain and figure out how they work together.
See: the documentary Wordplay
A crossword constructor in the film pointed out that if you take the D at the beginning of Dunkin Donuts and move it to the end you get Unkind Donuts. Develop your mind to notice this kind of thing in the world.
But don't keep constraints out of your personal work. Make haikus and give yourself rules.
48-hour film projects are an interesting source of inspiration within constraints. Get involved in something like this and see where it takes you. These are essentially design problems with clear criteria. Take these opportunities to narrow your focus and get something done.
The fundamental concept behind inspiration is the idea of a muse. Rob organized a big Summercamp Slasher themed birthday party. The idea was to make something so elaborate that it would be hard to do. They did a sequel every year where they would add a twist to their original concept. The whole thing became an orgy of inspiration.
Marriage (or other life events) can be opportunities to bring design into your life. Jason took his wedding as a chance to design identity, environmental graphics, a web site etc. It was a chance to spin two parts of his life together and get better.
Secret Santa is another chance to be forced to look for inspiration and to get creative. Rob made Virtual Stan for Jason as his secret santa, you know because his real name is Stan... This thing took on a life of its own but it emerged from a small fun community project.
The thing to remember is that inspiration is all around you. Experience the world in a way that let's you pluck out the things that trigger ideas and hold onto them. Here at SXSW there is so much inspiration around you so keep your eyes open for it.
This should trickle down in interesting ways to professional client work. Let them inform eachother. The point is to always be a designer in your life.
Nothing gets you inspired like a deadline. Jim Coudal
Let inspiration for a client project come from all over. Don't restrict to what's in front of you. Let it come from all angles, from music or a movie or anything.
Q: How do you use this to inspire teams?
The great thing about working on a team is brainstorming. Throw ideas around, let it spiral in any direction it will go, really build on eachother. Jump up and get excited. A great team is in large part related to rapport. At Happy Cog they do a weekly show-and-tell or anything. A great piece of design or a piece of gum that looks like the Virgin Mary.
When you start showing, describing, and sharing your inspiration it is infectious.
It doesn't matter who sees these side projects. It's about the thing itself and what making it gives you.
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