From the desk of Artistic Amanda…

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

I have lived in Nashville for nine years and am puzzled as to why no one has told me about the First Saturday Gallery Crawl till now. The downtown gallery crawl occurs the first Saturday of each month from 6-9pm. It’s completely free and open to the public… and really right up the alley of anyone who is in any way interested in the arts. A complimentary shuttle is even provided by the Downtown Partnership. If it’s possible, this recurring event made me love this city a little more.

As an artist myself, I always love looking at other artists’ work. The creativity in this world simply amazes me. The following were some of my favorites of the night:

The Rymer Gallery on 5th Avenue is exactly what you think of when someone mentions a downtown gallery: a large open space, brightly lit, with two back hallways and a loft for additional hanging space. A gorgeous venue and probably my favorite of the night.

You know you like a work of art when you wake up the next morning still thinking about it and that’s how I felt about Jordan Eagles‘ collection. Small framed works lined the stairs leading up to the Rymer Gallery loft and when reaching the top, Jordan’s “UR-26″ is staring you in the face. Similar to the “UR-15″ piece pictured here, “UR-26″ embeds a circular sunburst in a dark background, with little tongues flickering into the internal space of the piece and casting shadows onto the wall behind. The media… are you ready? Blood and copper preserved on plexiglas, covered with UV Resin.

Eagles experiments with his material to find the range of colors he can get by methods such as aging the blood or mixing it with other materials. He has started mixing in crushed copper, which can produce a metallic sheen like “UR17,” another fireburst-type image with a combination of metallic and bloody red in the central element.

Using clear resin, Eagles’ paintings have a slick artificial surface that contrasts with the organic qualities of the blood. The resin also makes the paintings safe—when you hear about paintings with blood, the initial reaction may be that it will be gross, or even a biohazard. The resin encases the blood and puts it at a safe remove. The entire collection was breathtaking.

On the same street, the Tinney Contemporary Gallery was holding the Stop Look Listen exhibition which featured new works from Lyle Carbajal (painter), Sharon Lee Hart (photographer) and Jason Lascu (sculptor). It was Lascu’s work that first caught my eye. Rather, it was hard to miss as the first piece to the left of the entrance was a wax man standing at the base of a ladder that reached all the way to the ceiling.

Lascu is a local Nashvillian artist focusing his work on combining figurative images and found objects that honestly express and illustrate poignant experiences and encounters which have shaped his life. As I went around the room and saw more and more wax men – some with bunny ears, some with dunce hats, some with masks – I noticed their faces and the emotion in their eyes. Impressive attention to detail, in my opinion.

The final favorites were side by side showcases in the Arcade at the Andrew John Gallery. The work of Andy Anh Ha was full of brightly colored lotus flowers. His artist statement reads,

“Text is used to elaborate the meaning of the lotus flower understood as ‘creative power and purity amid adverse surroundings.’ The lotus is an important aspect in regards to the relation it has with my culture and way of life. It represents my upbringing as a 1st generation welfare recipient and how my life has transformed. Through obtaining knowledge and culture, success has blossomed for my family and I.”

The work I enjoyed most was a large piece with a newsprint background covered with a whitewash. A large red lotus was painted on top, much like this one here. The entire thing was coated with resin to give it a crisp sheen. Such classic beauty.

Next door, John Hung Ha’s vibrant-colored fish was the perfect way to wrap up the night. Always fascinated with marine biology, the artist says he enjoys capturing the unique characteristics of the Koi fish and the goldfish.

“They have different characteristics and produce a positive energy that symbolizes prosperity and good health. …I think the most appealing thing about my work is the variation of media I use. My process involves oils, acrylics, enamels, fabrics, papers, laser-cut stencils, interference paint, and varnish.”

I have to agree with him. Just like fish scales shimmer in the water, John Hung Ha’s work – laced with sparkly beads and glittery residue -  shimmered across the showroom. If I’d had the means, I would’ve taken all the fish home with me.

I read something interesting once that compared the creative job to running a marathon. It’s difficult to generate ideas, the article pointed out. But you get better by training for it. If you were going to run a marathon in two months, you would prepare, wouldn’t you? You would train for that event; you would set a schedule of activities that would prepare your body for what would be asked of it on that day, because you knew that day would arrive. What if you had to prepare for a marathon but you didn’t know what day it would start? Enter in the comparison. We’ll work with a new client someday. They will come to us as creative professionals and we’ll need to bring our “A” game. Preparing our bodies to endure physical activity is just like preparing our minds for creative activity.

All that to say, creative exercises are pretty important. Today, I woke up my brain with this one:

Most of us are familiar with the Swiss Army Knife, that clever gadget that houses 276 tools in one handy red plastic sheath. As creatives, we may never have a glaring need for a 2″ hack saw, but there are things that we use every day in our professional life that might make more useful tools. Your task is to invent your “Professional Survival Swiss Army… Thing. Draw it on a piece of paper or simply list the items it would have.” (excerpt from Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw & Wendy Lee Oldfield)

Here are the specs for my Swiss Army…Thing! What are yours?

• automatic coffee maker, complete with mug
• a compartment with art supplies which include (but are not limited to) freshly sharpened pencils with large erasers, magic markers, acrylic paint, rubber cement, and paper clips
• tape measure
• a laser that would beam me across town for fast travel
• a button allowing me internet/email/calendar access that also told me the time while playing the itunes playlist of my choice
• scissors
• digital camera
• scanner
• cat treats

These two made me include the last one.

“Typography, the art of manipulating type to enhance communication, goes hand-in-hand with graphic design. It sets the mood. Establishes the pace. Evokes the feeling. Ensures readability. It’s part of that indescribable “something” that makes a document work.” -Designer’s Typography, 2009.

I first began dabbling in web design back in the early 90s, during the prime of Geocities and Angelfire. “Hey, look mom! I made it so the pictures will change when you wave your mouse over them!” Yeah, I really thought I was hot stuff.

Being a self-taught designer, I learned a lot over the years partly by natural curiosity (thanks for the internet, Al Gore!), but mostly by trial-and-error. Since my foundation was in web design, making the transition to print was a little rocky. (I attempted to design my very first print ad in Macromedia Fireworks. /headdesk) If I didn’t understand resolution, you can bet I didn’t know a thing about tracking, kerning or typography back then. Thankfully, I’m a quick learner.

To bring you up to speed, typography is more than just a pretty font. It’s the study of type and typefaces – the evolution of printed letters. Since man did not begin to write with type, but rather the chisel, brush, and pen, it’s the study of handwriting that provides us with the basis of creating type designs. In fact, several of the fonts we see on our computers have evolved from the work of typefounders of the 15th and early 16th centuries. (Claude Garamond, William Caslon… sound familiar?)

“Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. ” -Emil Ruder (1914-1970), co-founder of the International Center for the Typographic Arts in New York, 1962

Below are a few of my favorite displays of creative typography… what are some of your favorites?

By Craig Ward of Words Are Pictures

By MIAD Communication Design

screenshot of the acsys interactive website.

Duk Nguyen

More great found type photos by Greg Meadows: Take a walk through The Boneyard.

The Journal of Urban Typography:  dedicated to the documentation and study of signs, word fragments, and typography created with utilitarian intent in urban environments.

RESOURCES:

• 50 Useful Design Tools for Beautiful Web Typography courtesy of Smashing Magazine.
• PicFor.me Typography Gallery – for inspiration!
  

FREE FONT SITES:

• dafont.com
• fawnt.com
  
• 1001freefonts.com
• abstractfonts.com

*I Love Typography scrabble graphic designed by Hamish.