Take a Journey of Inspiration
Inspiration should serve as a motivator and guide.
Much more than superficial beauty can be found within the depths of that which you find intriguing. A beautiful piece before you shouldn’t be looked at and seen as pretty then discarded completely—it should be explored.
Yet most just look. They scour through a hundred beautiful images by this designer or pertaining to that theme and are somehow able to get through it all in minutes and consider themselves inspired.
Is this a real, luscious inspiration that has been found or is it something superficial? Has no more than an idea that can be lifted from the beauty before them been recorded in their mind? An idea remembered for their own projects?
This isn’t inspiration. It’s plagiarism.
Inspiration should be seen as a journey
Enter the train station and buy a ticket to a far away destination. A destination deeper that most dare venture.
Inspiration can be found in almost anything if we are willing to give up a bit of time and look at more than just the surface. When we’re willing to break things down and look at each individual piece, something great can always be found.
Sometimes the journey can be tricky and unexpected turns can present themselves and other times it’s smooth sailing. Either way, you will be a better creative for the travels taken.
First Stop – Pretty Pictureville
The train leaves from the station. We look at beautiful things along the way, until one ignites a fire within our souls. Then we stop.
Think about this piece that burns a white flame inside you. Perhaps it is an image that causes the illustrator’s heart to ignite a wild beat. Or a single sentence that causes the writer’s cheeks to dampen.
There is something about this piece that brought an emotion to the surface, that’s why it stopped you dead in your tracks. The real goal is to understand why this is so, with the hope that you can do the same to others through your own work.
Second Stop – Blood Stained Falls
Take what was found at the first stop and pull it apart. Spill its blood upon the floor and dissect what is left.
Really look at the beautiful work.
Ask yourself why your heart pounded when you took it in. Was it the way this element was juxtaposed with the other, or was it because it was an echo of past experiences? There is an underlying reason why you feel the way you do. Try to understand this feeling as best you can, so that when you get to the next stop you have something to gauge your discoveries against.
The key here is to constantly be asking your self why. Why did it do this to me? Why did I feel a flutter?
Third Stop – Measured Mountain
The next stop is to find out how. How did they do it? How can I do the same?
For a moment you need to look without seeing the aesthetic surface. Instead, you need to see the structure that helps create that surface. Get out your ruler and measure, get out your dictionary and define. The psyche of the character must be appreciated.
If it’s a design, sketch it out as a thumbnail and assess all the elements and the relationships they have with one another — be it texture, spatial, size or contrast. If it’s a paragraph of text, rewrite it and look at it sentence by sentence, word by word.
The reasoning for the decisions made must be found and understood. Use what you realised at the second stop to understand how this collection of marks managed to do something so powerful.
Final Stop – The Subliminal Sea
This is the most exciting place to visit. But you won’t even know you’re visiting—you’ll think your journey over and return home well before you arrive.
It is exciting because you will take what you have learned and apply it to your work.
When you sit to develop a new concept, the memories of your trip will come back to you.
At first you may have to remind yourself of an idea that’s locked away, but once you do, it will come through strong. This idea that you absorbed and found in that image, will be strengthened by all the others that are locked away. The new ideas absorbed will tangle with all the others hidden away, as well as every experience you’ve ever had.
All because you decided to look at a single piece of work for five minutes
rather than five pieces for one minute.
So it will be an original thought given to you through instinct. An instinct developed in such great ways that your skills, and the enjoyment you have in your work, will increase dramatically as you grow your wealth of experiences and knowledge. All this because you decided to look at a single piece of work for five minutes rather than five pieces for one minute.
You take these trips for the strengthening of knowledge and to give yourself a far greater resource to pull ideas from. Real ideas with foundations upon which beauty can be built. It’s a better plan than building beauty upon beauty, which is far too delicate a structure for any message.
An exotic destination
The quality of a purchased item decreases over time,
while the quality of an experience increases.
I truly wish I knew who to attribute this [paraphrased horribly, I'm sure] quote to, but it is far too relevant to not be included.
Illustration skills improve dramatically when an artist looks at a piece of work that ignites a fire in their souls and asks “Why is it so? Why do I want to devour this piece before me?” A writer’s skills will grow in leaps and bounds when a single sentence causes tears to run or hearts to pound and they ask themselves “Where is the secret? How was that done?”
While looking at a piece of artwork—be it a series of words, an arrangement of elements or a symphony of marks—let it give you an experience. Delve deep and travel along the tracks laid. It’s far more rewarding than briefly saying “oh, that’s pretty” and moving on aimlessly.
So rather than take a trip that lacks in excitement, visit exotic new lands instead. Visit the lands of those creatives whose work means so much to you. Discover their home towns—how their reasons and personal style developed—and your trips will float from your subconscious when you least expect it.
Traveling these tracks might mean that the work you produce today will become a must-see destination on a trip taken by another tomorrow.
Hi Alex, great article!
I’ve read a few things recently on the idea of “inspiration galleries” and have been reflecting myself on what inspiration really is. I have to admit like most people I use to flick through hundreds of blogs taking a look at all the glorious design on offer. I’ve come to the conclusion that this approach doesn’t teach me anything, and of course any “inspiration” tends to be along the lines of “that’s neat, I’ll just copy that element”.
I’ve started to change my habits with not just how I read design blogs but also how I write about design myself. This article really sums it up nicely.
I was the same — would flick through so many blogs in one sitting and thinking that I had achieved somethign because the number of unread articles in Google Reader was lower than when I started … then one night after I had spent a couple hours doing exactly that, I tried to remember something I had seen earlier and realised I couldn’t recall it at all..
then I tried to remember a single piece I had looked at in the hours I’d been planted at my desk and couldn’t thing of a thing … kind of a kick in the teeth — it’s not much different than watching crappy TV for two hours — you don’t get much out of it (except a feeling of laziness) and you feel dumber for it
I’m really glad you got something out of the article :) Next week I’ll be posting an article on a journey I took and how I discovered amazing things (and learned a huge amount too) from a design legend — you’ll have to let me know if you like it!
I love this article, Alex. I get caught up in surfing through all the “inspiration” galleries/posts, too. Often times, not only can I not remember everything (and I have a zillion tabs in Firefox AND Chrome open!), but I actually feel uninspired and demotivated and that’s beyond frustrating, especially with deadlines looming closer. I like your approach, going in depth on just a couple of really great pieces can be so much more constructive than getting through 20 pages of an inspiration gallery.
Totally awesome artwork, btw. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings!
Ah I’m so glad you liked it :D
It’s easy to get caught up in it — it is fun, and so I’m sure it can’t be that damaging to do it from time to time — but like choclate, it’s probably best to limit how much you indulge in devouring it :)
Though it might just be the way we work, I’m sure there’s something people who have brains that can absorb it all and they see something that we don’t? But I’d imagine that’s a special few, while the rest of us need to actually, you know, think about what we’re looking at.
And I’m as guilty as you are when it comes to tabs — I always have a few firefox windows open, all bursting at the seems with tabs to get back to. Then I wonder why Firefox is using 700mb of memory and my computer is getting sluggish!
I actually referenced some LOTR maps when putting it together! It’s so cool you picked up on that!
Another fantastic article, you certainly know how to write an inspiring post.
Your images accompanying the post are spot on as well, I felt like Frodo planning his route to Mordor, nice work.
The amount of times Ive bombed through CSS galleries and blogs, admiring the work and skills but never really taking it in and by lunch almost definitely forgotten about, is scary.
Wasted time? maybe, wasted resources? oh yes. Your point to really stop and look at work is a really good one. Once or twice a week I find a few pieces I love, that make me flutter, and replicate them to find the essence I admire. Its a good practice for keeping my design skills fresh.
Phenomenal article Alex. I really enjoyed the way you portrayed the message as a journey. I’ll be honest with you. I’m guilty of browsing for inspiration myself and actually, just recently, I’ve been doing just what you wrote about. It’s easy to look for pretty images but it’s another thing to be able to stop and figure out why you were impressed by something and what caused it.
Thanks for putting this into words. BTW, I’m really enjoying your articles and am glad that I discovered your blog. Keep up the great work.
Thanks Rory. I’m glad I’m not hte only one who tries to recreate other people’s work. Because web design isn’t my focus (I’m for print!), when I wanted to redesign retinart, the first thing I did was sketch out thumbnails of other sites that I really enjoyed and gave me a good feeling of balance and flow. The hope was to just see how they ticked…
And I’ve recently done the same with modernist works from the 40s-60s to figure out the geometrical principles governing it.. it can take a lot of work, but why not try to learn from the masters as best you can? Figuring out, even for a moment, how they think gives you such a great moment of clarity..
Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Design Informer! Or should I say Jad? I did a little looking, hope you don’t mind — I like to know who I’m talking to, and first names are a nicer way to reference people, so hi!
I’m happy you’re enjoying the site and articles!
It happens to so much of us, and for good reason! It’s fun! One of my favorite sites is ffffound, which is purely looking at pretty pictures, but I think it’s just a matter of knowing how much sugar is too much, no?
I think as long as you’re getting enough healthy meals, a little sweetness isn’t so bad :)
Thanks for this post. It’s a perspective I haven’t heard in a while and have—I sadly admit—let fall by the wayside.
The idea is a close cousin to stopping to smell the roses. In this case, we gain more for our minds by slowing down than we do for our eyes.
Side note: I love the artwork for the article!
Glad you liked the artwork! Thanks!
I think you summed it up perfectly … something tells me I could have gotten much of the same point accross if I had just written “Stop and smell the roses of inspiration” … argh! I’m always over complicating things ;)
Great post Alex!, sure i feel the same sometimes when digging through blogs to collect inspiration. Recently i read somewhere that when you are at a large museum on a trip, you normally spend an average time of 10-15 second for reading the plate with the picture info and and average of 3-5 second watching the picture itself.
Same when it come to inspiration digging over the web…
But, anyway, i think that from the hundred of images you see some patterns remains that blend together, subconscious, in your brain to bring up some new creation (that the way Kant said the learning works).
By the way, it´s always much useful and enjoyable to take your time analyzing a single work, as you the goal is learn how the emotion works so we can replicate it in our work.
Great analogy! The problem I sometimes have with larger galleries or musuems is that I get to the end and hardly remember more than two or three pieces. Luckily I knew this about my self when I went to an Andy Warhol exhibition a couple years ago, so really took my time and now I can still remember a number of the pieces.
I think you’re right, if you look at enough, for long enough, no matter how quickly, you’ll end up making patterns in your mind. Which is what happens to most of us. But when I think of that, i can’t help but wonder why not spend a few minutes enjoying a few of these images and finding the patterns consciously?
Yes, completely agree. Eventually i found that, when i´m at a museum is better for me to focus in a couple of artist of my interest or maybe a historical period or a few works of art instead of walking around the gallery… Same for inspiration, i found is better for me to peep over hundreds of images (Thanks, RSS God :) and stop only when something caught my eye (i wonder if it´s some kind of subconscious training to be able of such a quick and instinctive choice of what is good enough for me, you know, what Roland Barthes called “Punctum”, the thing that jab you when looking an artwork).
The goes the storage process, the chosen image goes both to my HD and to my memories, later when i need it (i have to do a particular work) i come back to those images and look at them trying to figure out the message they carry (what particular thing, color, shape, layout, etc. “jag” me so that i fully understand them).
I think it’s exactly subconscious training.. much like how we’re able to spot eye’s in a crowded scene so easily (an evolutionary defense I’d say — lets us know that we have to decided to either fight or take flight?)..
We can make decisions on aesthetics very quickly and spot things worth noting — I hinted at this (though didn’t give it enough thought/mention), but it’s probably ok to browse through the hundreds, as long as you get that jag then go looking.. so building up a library to come back to is a great idea! I’ve slowly been collecting images, but I need to learn to refer to them more often and more actively (and with purpose) as you suggest.. thanks for the reminder :)
I also have to thank you for mentioning Roland bathes and Punctum — will look into it!