The purpose of design is to “enhance the visual appearance and usefulness of messages and information,” according to the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Designers specifically “build messages that catch attention, lead us to think about their meaning, and stick in our memory throughout time” using font, pictures, illustrations, and graphic components.
Your greatest strength as a designer is your creativity because graphic design is a part of the creative business. It’s a graphic designer’s job to come up with fresh, enticing designs and to bend or violate the rules of protocol to address problems posed by conveying messages in novel ways.
Let’s talk about how to make creativity a habit, not just a fleeting idea.
A quick bite:
At any given moment, there are a million things we could be doing, creating, absorbing, and this diversion of attention sometimes strips us of our motivation. We often feel uninspired due to option paralysis or a need for clarity in what we want to say. I have tried and true ways to stay on top of feeling motivated and inspired…
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Whether or not this news is new, you will only sometimes feel creative. And that’s normal! Nobody loves what they do all the time: just as not all musicians will feel like going on stage. Not all lawyers are stoked to go to court, not all graphic designers will feel inspired to create a particular logo, and not all muralists will feel motivated to sit out in the roasting sun to paint a wall.
The key to fostering a thriving creative business has the tools and processes that allow you to find inspiration and motivation even when you’re not feeling it. I noted a few weeks ago that it’s more important to show up and constantly create than to create something unique and portfolio worthy. Constant creativity takes constant motivation and inspiration, and the following thoughts will help you stay in a creative groove.
Whether it’s your ego holding you back, a lack of inspiration, or maybe you’re just stuck in a rut, here are a few of my tried and proper ways to find inspiration and motivation when I’m not feeling it:
Reading, Writing, Talking.
While writing about finding inspiration for graphic designers, we wanted to see an example of who a designer could relate to and take a few lessons from. Hence while digging, we found Miquel Reina, passionate about creativity. He is a novelist and Award-winning Creative, art director, designer, and filmmaker.
His professional career has taken him to work in some of the largest and most prestigious design studios and advertising agencies, such as Grey Barcelona and Thinkingbox Vancouver. He has won several digital design awards (FWA, Awwwards, CSS Design Awards, The One Show, ADCC) and advertisement awards, such as the prestigious Sol de San Sebastian.
In 2019 he was selected as one of the best designers in Canada by Strategy Magazine. He also wrote and directed many music videos, one of them “Dead in the water” by Ellie Goulding, and was a Tribeca Film Festival Finalist.
He has been working in the industry for 14 years (2008). He has been lucky enough to work across many world’s leading brands and companies, such as 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate, Warner Brothers, Lululemon, Wrangler, La Caixa, Port Aventura, Riot Games & many more.
In 2018, his best-selling debut novel, “Lights on the Sea” was published in Spain by the prestigious publishing house: Planeta. And that same year, it was translated into five languages: English, Italian, German, Russian and Czech.
His debut novel, “Lights on the Sea,” is now represented by the Creative Artist Agency in Hollywood to be adapted into a movie. He is currently working on his second novel and continues working as a Creative worker for the videogame industry.
