From the desk of Artistic Amanda…

A few of my past blogs have contained excerpts from Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield. I’m a huge fan of this book as it delivers on its promise of waking up your brain and training you to think outside the box – something we, as designers, should include as part of our daily creative maintenance.

Now the caffeinated duo has done it again with their book Caffeine for the Creative Team: 200 Exercises to Energize Your Next Brainstorm. And thanks to HOW Design, they have made it easy to jolt the creativity of your next brainstorming session with these downloadable cards… enjoy!

There are some days when I can’t keep up with my own ideas. I get excited about one, begin to focus on a project and seem to have 1000 or more in the process. Of course, then there are the OTHER days. The dreaded days when the creative well appears to have dried up and nothing I create strikes me as impressive or innovative. That’s when I wish inspiration could be tapped into like On-Demand television. You could see all your options at once… and even be able to DVR some creativity for your 2:30pm meeting when you know your caffeine buzz will reach it’s breaking point. While we don’t have Inspiration On-Demand, what we do have is the internet where we can access portfolios, creative journals, magazines, color swatches, patterns… anything we want! A powerful source of creative energy can be accessed by examining the work of others.

There are pitfalls, however. Reviewing the styles and solutions that other artists have discovered before you’ve had a chance to sketch out a page or two of your own ideas can short-circuit your creative process and narrow the search to directions that have already been explored. On the other hand, ignoring the work of others completely can lead to ideas that are out-of-step or below the bar that has been set by other artists.

Here are 10 of my favorite inspiration-generators:

COLOURlovers: A color and design community for creative inspiration and sharing the love of color. (Patterns, too!)

LogoPond: A community gallery of logo designs. All the logo inspiration you’ll ever need.

DeviantART: An online art community showcasing everything from graphic design and sketches to sculptures, photography and paintings.

The Best Designs: The best Flash and CSS Web Design.

Faveup: Part of Eden Creative Communities out of Sydney, Australia, Faveup is a gallery of inspirational design that allows you to vote for your favorites.

Smashing Magazine: = L O V E. Tutorials, freebies, articles… “We smash you with information that will make your life easier. Really.” True story.

Flickr: Photos, photos, photos. Mostly, I like to explore interesting photos over the last 7 days and wait for something to strike me.

HOW Magazine: A wealth of information including articles, books, competitions, and forums where you can discuss design topics and get peer critiques.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind: For any creative type who wants to quickly limber up their imagination on a daily basis.

Design Essentials Index: Includes the Design Basics Index, the Type Idea Index and the Color Index 2 to give idea-hungry designers a wealth of practical design info at their fingertips.

Where do you get your inspiration for new ideas? When do you tap into it and how? Is it time to try a new approach?

When I’m feeling the need to be inspired, the internet usually serves as my one-stop shop. I browse images or sift through portfolios of other designers. Today, I steered more toward written word inspiration.

The Business Times out of the UK, posted an article online about Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom. I found it fairly long, but made time to read it through because of one quote that caught my eye at the very end:

“Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximize trial and error — by mastering the error part.“

This struck a chord with me. Trial and error has been my education in design and business. Often times failure has a bad connotation because we feel embarrassed, disappointed, sometimes hurt. It is up to us to turn that around and fail with pride, fast and cleanly. Value a failed project or proposal for the lesson learned and strive for greatness with your next attempt.

Perfection.

Or as close to it as we can hope to come as commercial artists, occurs when we create a piece that makes the client happy, effectively promotes their message and remains true to our artistic ideals.

Perfection cannot happen every time.

But, every time we design a logo, website or annual report, create an illustration or take a photograph we must AIM for it.

Otherwise, we are status quo and our creative instincts will die of boredom. -Jim Krause

Excite + Experience + Enjoy + Expand