10 Tips To Shake Off A Creative Block
Everyone, at least every now and then gets stuck for ideas…designers get stuck for creative ideas, and the same can be said for many professionals where creativity and ideas are needed on a regular basis.
Constantly churning out fresh new ideas and concepts can drain the old creative juices, but there are things you can do to help revive them;
1. Always looking at the same four walls in the same old office? Change your visual environment, even if that means taking a walk outside during a mental block to give your mind something fresh to look at and allow yourself to think about the challenge whilst being somewhere different.
2. Brainstorm…. don’t try to come up with the exact solution or the specific winning idea; instead simply throw random ideas, thoughts and images into the mix, keep a record of them and come back to them a day later. I often compile a ‘mood board’ the day before I aim to start work on a design, which is a set of visual impressions that I link to what I would like to create, once I’ve created the mood board I come back to it a day later with a fresh mind.
3. Be inspired; take a look at what others are doing.
4. If you normally work in silence, put on some music, if you normally work with music, switch it off. You can change your auditory scenery as well as your visual scenery to spark your brain out of it’s rut.
5. If you normally come up with your ideas in front of a pc, sit down (in a different environment preferably) with a pen and piece of paper instead - go through magazines and tear out visuals that relate to your project and glue them to the pages and make notes around them. Go retro!
6. Get an outside perspective. Have a chat with someone not in your industry about your ideas and brainstorm with them, this can be particularly useful to get a really fresh perspective on the project at hand.
7. Take a break. Often a creative rut is nothing more than a tired mind that needs a break….have you been working too many hours recently? How long was it since your last holiday or day off? Have you been getting enough sleep? Your wellbeing impacts hugely on your ability to think creatively especially if you have worked on a lot of creative projects recently.
8. Exercise. That’s right, I know it’s scary but get off your swivel chair, take your hand off the mouse and go and do some exercise for at least 30 minutes, there’s nothing like blood flowing to the brain to revive it’s thinking power!
9.Avoid snow blindness. Take a break from the project that you are stuck with and come back to it 24-48 hours if deadlines permit, it’s amazing how differently you view things when you’ve haven’t been looking at the same thing every day for a week or more solid! It can be difficult to force creativity and sometimes it just needs more time.
10. Try not to panic or worry about it too much. This is temporary, it happens to everyone all the time, it will pass and stress is not a friend of creativity.
Anyone got any more suggestions to add to the list for coming out of a creative block?
September 4th, 2008 at 4:01 am
Great tips, many which I follow. It’s worth noting how most of them relate to breaking out of your routine, since monotony is creativity’s killer. I take longer on average on projects because I always force myself to take a break for a day or so; I usually catch or add something I didn’t get to think about previously.
The only thing I would add is to make sure you have a passion outside of design! Design is on various levels, an expression of yourself (no matter how restrictive the client might be), Anything you do, whether it’s photography, fiction, hiking, will always add a bit to your work. Learning new things and looking at everything with an open mind can really add fuel to your creative spark!
September 4th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Some great points, I agree that it’s monotomy that does it a lot of the time.
Whenever I go away on holiday (which is typically about three times a year for just 7 days at a time) for a month solid after my return my creativity is definitely cranked up a notch.
Amanda
xx
September 11th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
We find regular crits of each others work really helpful- just finding the time to do them regularly when the studio is so busy can be very difficult.
September 12th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Just looked at your portfolio, I really love your project work, it’s all really creative. I especially like the work you did for Stitch Arena and MadeInSeaton.
Amanda
x
October 10th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
This is a good article to re-visit at just such times, Amanda - thank you. I especially find brainstorming helpful - especially with willing Skype chums working from home too.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
[…] was me following my own advice in ‘10 Tips To Shake Of A Creative Block‘ in which more than one of the tips suggests one should do something differently if wanting […]