Drawing inspiration

Why is inspiration important to draw upon?

Here I discuss these aspects and the importance of them on the design process.

As a designer, we get paid for our ideas and our abilities. We get hired so that we can work with the client in order to build brands from the ground up and draw out entire platforms. We imagine, dream and invent, not just because it’s our job to do so, but because it’s our passion. We strive to come up with designs that are going to solve real world problems for our clients.

Like any other professional, we don't like to admit when we've reached the limits of your capabilities, or when you’ve hit a mental block and are unable to use our creativity to solve a problem. Sometimes it can make you feel like a fraud or that you’re bad at your job. We want to feel like we always know what we are doing and creative. Encountering these mental block can make us get defensive about our skills and retreat inward when, in fact, we should be opening up and reaching outward for solutions to our problems.

If we can admit that we can look to others for inspiration, we can elevate ourselves as creatives. We don’t have to be the end-all-be-all of original thinking. Where our ideas come from is irrelevant as long as we’re doing our job well.

Learn to look at different designs and pick up small parts that you feel would make sense for your project, whether it’s layout concepts, sizing, or navigation.

Drawing inspiration doesn't mean that we are looking for the right ways things are being done. When in fact we also need to look at what we can improve on. This doesn't mean that we must make them public for everyone to know but rather internalise these aspects and look to your designs and see that you haven't mad the same mistakes. There may be elements that you look at and think "wow I really think that this will work well in my design" but at the same time you may notice that there are slight alignment adjustments that can be made. It is a way that we become better designers as this now has become part of our general knowledge and we are now able to draw from this in future projects.

What to remember

Just as you have done and drawn inspiration upon someone elses designs, people are going to do the same from your designs. It makes us better designers at the end of the day.