so welcome to today's podcast on how to be more creative as a graphic designer
now this is going to be more of a relaxed kind of approach compared to my usual videos i'm going to
be sharing with you some of my tips some of my stories and how graphic design is based around
your life in general and this kind of upload is perfect for someone who's traveling somewhere
just wants to work and listen to something related around graphic design so get comfortable grab your
favorite drink and let's dive into some creative discussion but briefly a quick word from today's
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so one of the things i used to encounter a whole lot to my design career was hitting that creative
wall it's that kind of invisible barrier that prevents you from getting to your end solution
or your end kind of concept you have in mind well it could be you can't even come up or generate
that end concept this doesn't just happen to you it doesn't just happen to designers it happens
to writers happens to almost every creative in every creative field that you can think of
but let me ask you this question when you last had a creative block or you hit a creative wall
what did you do about that situation how did you handle it one of the issues preventing you
from tapping into inner creativity could well be where you're sat right now i want you to close
your eyes and imagine your desk your workstation when you think about this place do you get a
feeling of comfort and welcoming is it somewhere you feel comfortable in being if when you think of
this workstation you have a kind of aversion or a feeling of uncomfort this could suggest
that where you're working isn't ideal for you coming up with great ideas and performing the
best you can see i'm from england but i moved to asia in 2010 and i moved back to england in 2020
because of the pandemic due to lockdown i was confined in my old parents house in a very small
room and i had to set up a desk in this tiny pokey bedroom now every time i sat down at that place i
didn't realize it but i wasn't in the right frame of mind to be working or generating concepts
simply because i wasn't properly comfortable in this space now this might be something that
applies to you and your current situation but where you are working and where you're
trying to come up with these ideas is a huge factor in how well you perform
people kind of overlook this but it is really really important but if say you were in a
similar situation to me on lockdown and you can't move somewhere else because it's just not ideal
then you could always try and venture out for a walk somewhere go to a coffee shop or just sit
somewhere else in the house with a pen and a paper and just generate ideas in a different location
you will be surprised at how differently you think sitting in a different location also you might
want to consider how comfortable your chair is at your workstation and that kind of lighting and
environment you put yourself in around that desk try and make it as comfortable and homely to you
as possible so you can seemingly fit into that situation and generate some really neat
and creative ideas and something else i personally do is i always have a notepad and a pen ready
beside my bed in case i think of something when i'm falling to sleep or i even have a dream of
something that's creative and sparks an idea and if you are super uber serious about being creative
you might even take your notepad to the restroom and jot down some ideas whilst on the toilets
that's not something i do but hey apparently many great ideas of the past have been generated whilst
relieving themselves on the toilets now again i'm going to ask you to close your eyes but this time
i want you to take a few deep breaths and then connect with your body imagine your body from your
feet up to your legs your torso to your head how does it feel and how are you feeling in that body
do you feel like you're tired and lacking in energy and drains or do you feel really upbeat
and ready to go so something i found out for myself in the last 15 years of my career is that
if i'm lacking in energy then my creativity is going to be lacking as well people underestimate
how much energy it takes to sit down at a desk and work on a computer people have never done this for
a job to simply understand they think it must be so relaxing sitting down all day and just working
but due to all the micro things you need to do organize and think about you use up so much energy
just by thinking and so if you are lacking energy you're not going to have that power there to think
up new creative original ideas and what things can actually limit our energy well of course
people who don't exercise and who are kind of stagnating all day sitting down will actually
have less energy in general than people who exercise regularly this is due to metabolism and
the constant movement increasing that metabolism also someone who doesn't sleep well at night is
going to have less energy throughout the day than somebody who does sleep well until enough hours
and of course what you put into your body is going to reflect on how much energy you have and how
good you feel when you feel good and healthy then your mind and your thinking will be better as well
and if that's good then obviously your creativity is going to be good too what i'm actually saying
in this section is that if you want to have good ideas and you want to come up with promising
creative designs is that you want to take care of your body and how you feel again this is something
many designers overlook and it is a pretty big link in connection between mind and body
and what you make is inspiration a double-edged sword and by inspiration i mean looking online
for inspiration resources or previous or past existing designs that someone has made
i mean yeah sure you can see a design then get inspired and make something else on your own
but does this kind of limit creativity if you're looking at specific design then aren't you going
to narrow what you produce at the end results down to the confinements of that inspirational piece
and i personally think inspiration is pretty important and it can be a thing that brings
you out of that creative block and brings you into you know a new direction of creativity
so having a good solid inspirational sources to look at is very helpful but sometimes i do think
it can be a double-edged sword and it can actually limit creativity i remember back in college i must
have seen the helvetica typeface somewhere and it really inspired me i think it was on a poster
actually and it really did inspire me and it kind of brought on a whole new love for typography but
the thing is i ended up slapping helvetica on pretty much every single design i made it didn't
matter what the client was it didn't matter who the target market was i would just slap some form
of helvetica onto my design now is that being creative no it's not it's being limited down
to a specific solution and often that solution won't work out for the client or the target market
of course now 15 years later i can look back and see how that was pretty stupid i would never limit
myself to one typeface these days but they're gonna show that back then i myself was limiting
myself due to inspiration from somewhere else so yeah you need to be aware and just when you are
using inspirational sources understand that the inspiration can also be limiting you but what
other ways can we generate our own radical original creative ideas well here's one for
you bookworms out there reading fictional works i'm somebody who loves a good novel and actually
i pretty much read most nights before i sleep but there is a very interesting link between simply
reading some fictional work say a novel to being more creative now what do you think that link is
when you read a book a fictional novel you are reading simple words on a piece of paper
that the author has created themselves but the book in your hand and those words
on the page are simply just that they're just printed words on a page when you're reading
along and following a story you kind of take those words and you change them into mental imagery and
situations and scenarios your mind literally paints pictures and solutions and situations
just from text on a page this in itself is really really creative when you think about it
when you are really zoned into a story or a novel you can kind of enter a dream world where you
forget your surroundings and you're just focusing on this book and creating those mental images
this has been studied by scientists and they have done scans on the brain whilst someone is
reading or has read a book and it did show more activity in the creative regions of your brain
so it is actually a really good idea if you're stuck for ideas of being creative just to simply
spend half an hour to an hour reading some fictional work it can kind of be like a warm
up for your brain just like thinking of someone who goes to the gym and they have
to stretch and warm up their body before they do any heavy lifting i remember this happened to me
last year for a logo design project i was working on now i really could not come up with ideas i'd
taken a walk i'd scribble down notes i've even tried completely changing at my desk but i was
still was kind of stuck i had the brief and i had a general direction i knew i had to go in but it
was like that end concept was kind of blurred out in my mind and it was just really unobtainable
so i did some research into what i'm telling you right now about reading fiction
and at this point in my life i had to stop reading for whatever reason
so i pulled out one of my favorite novels 1q84 by murakami i really got back into it
i got stuck right into the fictional writings of murakami and for me he's one of the best authors
for this because his way of storytelling is so highly descriptive and he spends such great time
and effort on really painting those situations and those places that draw you into his world
and so i'd be there reading completely forgetting where i was sitting and just being enthralled in
his fictional writings and sure enough not long after that i started to get more ideas
and the concepts were really coming to me for the logo but sometimes we just need that kickstart
we need to warm up the brain and really light up those creative regions of our grey matter upstairs
but if you're someone who's more technical and you really prefer a laid out systematic approach
then something i've talked about before in this channel is keywords
keywords are such a huge thing for making design concepts for me personally as a graphic designer
so again we come back to that pen and paper approach
and you should write down keywords based around the client your project your brief and so on
in doing so you can marry together keywords that kind of pair up well one example here
was a project i worked on for a drone company called vespula from my keywords
i got the approach that vespula was a different way of saying wasp or a kind of flying insects
and also i got a keyword relating to the military as that was their drone flying style
so i merged together wasp and military to form a very geometric strong logo symbol and
to this day that's one of the best logo designs i personally have worked on and sure it wasn't
the most successful in terms of the business taking that design and using it for their success
that's beyond the designer's control but in my opinion it was one of the most effective designs
i've worked on and it does really pay homage and respect the briefs that i had given to me
so yeah using keywords is a big big help for boosting creativity
the more keywords you can write down that are relevant the better your chances are for creating
original creative and awesome designs so it seems like i've chosen a pretty bad day to record the
first podcast because my voice is almost going actually but moving on anyway another
thing that i personally make use of to enforce creativity is the use of deadlines and goals
sometimes we just need to kick up the back side and we just need to
adhere to nike slogan of just do it if you have a deadline and a goal in place and you keep
reminding yourself of that goal or deadline then you're kind of forced to come up with something
sure that's not only going to be the defining factor but when you keep in mind the deadline
and the goal and you take into consideration everything else you've spoken about today
you will work faster more often and hopefully more efficiently if you set a deadline
for say the 7th of may you might even have 3 weeks before then and you don't want to start work until
say 4 days before the deadline yes this is called procrastinating and if you do have the time
to work on something way before the deadline give yourself a secondary deadline that is earlier if
a designer is being rushed the likelihood is they won't make the best design work they can yes some
of you out there will work better under pressure but for most of us it's not going to produce
the best designs so i do encourage putting a deadline before the real deadline so to speak
now here's something else that i found helps quite a bit and something a bit unconventional
so you've come up with a design and there's something not too right about it or something
that doesn't hit home to the brief and you feel like you're not finished yet or send
that design to a friend or a fellow designer or even a family member and get them to do this
ask them to send you three things they like about your design three things they don't like about it
and three things it reminds them of when you have this returned back to you firstly you
will know what works in your design according to them and what doesn't
but also you have something they linked mentally to your design and those links
are a different perspective from somebody else and it could trigger a whole new direction for
you on your design it might come back to that thing of two heads are better than one
now here's something many designers don't think about and that is inspired by a quote by john
cleese if you want creative workers give them enough time to play so what does this quote
mean to you well to me it suggests that someone who has their own free downtime and can relax
you know let the hair down or whatever will produce more creative work if you're stuck
in your office 14 hours a day every day a week you're going to get burnt out and your brain
isn't going to work properly and so those ideas won't come it kind of goes back to that thing we
spoke about earlier about being too tired and not understanding how your body is feeling we
all need downtime we will need to do things we enjoy and have fun and relish in doing
and so if you understand that and do give yourself that time other parts of your creative life will
benefit from it as well without a doubt so next time you're sat there at 2 a.m pulling
your hair out staring at your computer screen probably best just to go to bed and then wake
up early and do something a bit fun for a few hours and then get back to the task at hand
there are so many designers out there and there's a huge expectation to produce good things i feel
like many people are afraid to fail i know it's hard when you spend a lot of time on something and
you think it's great but then other people kind of shoot it down or you realize that no it's not
that great when you compare it to other design works out there the thing is we all fail even
people such as steve jobs bill gates and so on these people who have built up dollars of wealth
they've all had ideas that failed they've all done things that have completely flopped
and that's just part of being human is part of the whole experience of learning and you know trial
and error and so forth if only you could see the amount of things i've done that with failures in
the past i mean even before this youtube channel i had a completely different channel unrelated
to graphic design and that completely failed and looking back on it he was pretty terrible actually
so simply being afraid to fail can hamper or prevent creativity you might be scared
to produce something to your full ability or you might even be scared to produce anything
i think of it as stepping stones you know the last stepping stone is that a really awesome
design there are stepping stones to that final one and those stepping stones must be walked across
and yes you might slip into the water and you might get your feet wet but when you
get to that final stepping stone you can look back and see how you've improved along the way
so you'll never be afraid to produce something and don't be afraid
that what you produce is gonna suck because you need to suck to begin with to get anywhere goods
now going back to the point of having a notepad and pen with you quite often
a lot of the time people get ideas or they get creativity and they just let it kind of drain away
they do nothing about it i mean how many people have had great ideas in the shower or somewhere
else and then they just get out of the shower get dried and get dressed and forget about it
pure awesome creativity should never be wasted so when you do have a great idea don't just waste it
and forget about it turn it into something harness that creativity and let it run
this is what separates a lot of the great designers from the really average or novice ones
the ones that really make use of that creative spark end up creating fires
i hope this podcast has been a creative spark for you and it's opened your eyes in some way
i would have liked to talk for longer but my throat is really playing up
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me know down below the kind of topics you want to discuss in this podcast and i hope wherever
you are whatever you're doing you have a great day until next time design your future today peace you