On Finding Inspiration

Inspiration is basically what jump-starts your creativity when you cannot think of anything to make. However, finding it is not as easy as it seems, and often times it depends more on chance than anything else. I have put a list together of ideas and options that will increase your chances of finding inspiration. So, here it goes.

• Keep a notebook

Keep a notebook, and just sketch out your ideas. Since sketching is a lot faster than doing complete design mock-ups or rough drafts of art, it is much easier to quickly pump out ideas. The nice thing about drawing designs out is, when you keep them small and quick, you are able to look back at them differently, giving you more original ideas.

• Recycle ideas

Keeping a notebook is also helpful, because, not only is it in one place, but you can take advantage when you have inspiration, and sketch down as much as possible as quickly as possible. Then, later when you need inspiration, you can just use your old ideas. One other option is to, when you have the time, look through all your art or designs and find new creativity through them.

• Find artist you like and follow them

It is important to find other artists/designers you like, and with the increasing number of community art and design sites, it is important to find these artists and keep up to date with their work, and pay attention to what inspires you, even if you already have inspiration (use it later). If you are not doing this, you have no reason and you might as well start now. This also serves a foundation for my next point.

• Find the people that the people you like like

This basically means find the artists that you the artists you like, like. Yeah, that probably did not clarify much, but I’ll just try to keep explaining it. While finding very popular artists is not difficult at all, it is more difficult to find the less known ones, who often times are just as inspiring if not more. To find them, use your favorite artists (and just add water!), and find out who they like, as they usually will leave behind something that tells it.

• Subscribe to smaller, less known blogs

If you did not know, there happens to be a very convenient RSS feed button towards the top of the sidebar; just thought I might point that out. Yes, me telling you to follow small blogs has a purpose other than shameless self-promotion. It is like finding the artists that your favorite artists like, and it follows the same principle. As I said before, finding inspiration is a lot of chance, and finding things you have not seen before. It is important to not just follow the big name blogs, because the less known blogs, will produce, or lead you to original ideas, you have not seen before.

There are many less known blogs who do not produce original work, but I am sure you have the ability to sort them out. Finding them is easy too, often times, the blogs you often follow will point you to some of these, and you can also just go to blogs with posts that only do just that.

So, basically that it, by following these steps you can increase your chances of being inspired.