Inspiration and Its Impact on Creativity

I’m a big believer in inspiration and its impact on creativity. I believe John Dewey wrote about the origin of ideas and how nothing comes out of your mind without first putting stuff in there. Feed your mind, as they say.

Feeding your mind to help develop concepts and ideas is a huge part of successful design. It also helps manage the client’s expectations and limit big surprises. In the old days designers would go behind closed doors for like a month, then come out of hibernation and say to the client: here it is! Today that shit doesn’t fly. Propr’s entire design process is built around research, managing expectations, and of course empathy for the user.

When I was teaching design a few years back or when reviewing portfolios one of my favorite pieces of advice has to do with inspiration. I tell young designers to look at more work, follow today’s trends and dig into design history to avoid the latest fads, and always gather inspiration. But the most impart part about inspiration is making sure you are getting it from more than one place. Because if you are only get your inspiration from a single source, you are stealing. And stealing isn’t proper.