Talking about design: stay inspired
Top tips you need to know when you start working as a design consultant — part 2
Creating and shaping interfaces for your clients is your main task as a designer. However, this affects your creativity and inspiration. All designers know the feeling of not getting anything on your artboard, of an empty mind, no inspiration, no creativity, and an empty screen.
You can’t predict these moments but, when they occur, I have a few tips to help you out.
Did you miss our post on the feedback loop? Don't forget to read this first part of our "top tips for designers" series!
Get an outside perspective
Tip № 1: Read blogs and apply the ‘lessons learned’ to your own designs.
A lot of people search for inspiration by Googling around, which is good, but I would recommend reading a lot of blogs in particular. Reading blogs helped me improve my skills as a designer tremendously and it's a great way to make some quick wins in your design evolution.
After reading a blog, apply the ‘lessons learned’ on examples you’ve made in the past, just to exercise.
When taking your personal evolution to the next level, I also recommend you to read blogs about unrelated design subjects too. Think about marketing, SEO, UX, leadership etc.. This will widen your knowledge on all the aspects good design needs to align with, or influences.
Tip № 2: Critique other people’s work
Another idea is to start looking at other people's designs. Don't just review independent designers but also look at the bigger brands. Try to think about why a design approach was chosen and why it seems to be a good solution. And, if you can’t figure it out, try to Google some background information on why a design was chosen so you can see the reasoning behind it.
Tip № 3: Talk to other creatives and non-creatives
It might be something you don't immediately think about, but try to talk to people who are creative in another way than you are. For example, talk to developers or managers and really listen to how they view a certain subject. You will be surprised at the outcome!
Also, having a chat with the designers around you is very important. Sometimes, I see my fellow-designers staring at their screens, completely lost in thought. Once, I saw someone stare at the same design for almost 3 hours. In the end, I decided to approach that person by asking how things were going. By simply giving some input and feedback, that person was able to get unstuck and create a new and improved design only half an hour later.
Be creative
Tip № 4: Keep triggering your own creativity
When you have lots of inspiration, it's also easier to be creative. I always try to trigger creativity by starting over and over with the same goal, but with a different approach. The only rule I follow is to create something totally different from the previous designs until I have a decent amount of different approaches. This keeps me from getting stuck too easily, and it's a really good way to ideate on my work.
Tip № 5: Learn to love change & spice things up
As a designer, you need to love changing things all the time. This way, you keep challenging yourself.
I change things every time I start a new project or design. This helps me create the ultimate working method which will ultimately increase my design process. I keep looking for the best way to name files or layers, the best structure in tools, potential new tools we can start using, and so on.
Conclusion
Long story short, my key tip to stay inspired and creative is to communicate about it with different people in the process. A second pair of eyes is always good to have.
If you have any other top tips that could help me or other designers stay creative and inspired, please comment below.
In our third and final post of this series, coming up soon, I will talk about the validation of designs in the real world. Be on the lookout for this next post!
