Trying to feel inspired all the time can sometimes leave you feeling a bit overwhelmed. Creative block is definitely real and if you’re in a job where you need to be thinking out of the box to help your business grow, you might be feeling a bit stressed out about how to find your flare again. Since we’re a team full of individuals working with customers every day on lots of projects that require a lot of creative thinking, we know a thing or two about where to look for inspiration that’ll give you the fuel to keep on creating beautiful and impactful outcomes no matter what it is you’re working on. In this article, we’re sharing 5 sources of creative inspiration we love.
Books
Whether you like a digital book or you prefer one you can accidentally drop in the bath, books remain one of the best sources of inspiration irregardless of what field you work in. Whether you’re a digital marketer looking for inspiration on the world’s greatest ad campaigns or you’re a interior designer looking for the next en vogue colour, books are something we believe every creative should be looking to when feeling like they’re in a creative rut. For us of course, we love a great graphic design book. These are great for perusing possible colour combos for your next design, learning the fonts you love and getting a feel for your personal style when it comes to design. Plus if you’re not much of a reader you won’t have to worry, most of these are pretty much all pictures. Here’s an example of 3 graphic design books our in-house graphic designer, Jack Bailey, keeps handy to his desk…
Industry News
When you’re working in a creative job, keeping an eye on the industry news is pretty important. Doing this helps inspire us to create work that is relevant and will more powerfully communicate with the modern-day viewer. It also helps us to have a deeper understanding of the latest trends, which in turn helps keep our graphic design looking as fresh as possible and working hard to positively impact the brands reputation.
How can you keep up-to-date with industry news?
Gather sources that you know are reporting on the very latest stories reliably and make sure to periodically check in with what’s been happening. Following those sources on social media will help you get the news faster. In addition to that way of accessing industry news, consider tools like Feedly to collect all of your relevant sources in one easy to view area without ever having to sift through content you don’t really care too much about.
Social Media
Social media is a fantastic place to connect with individuals who share the same passions as you and to get inspired. Searching via hashtags for inspiration and connecting with thought-leaders in your space can help you to create a feed full of content that will help inspire your work. If you’re feeling a little bit unimaginative, looking at others who are making an impact in your field can help you to think of some new ideas. For example over on TikTok, we share lots of graphic design tutorials on methods that can help you upgrade your graphic design easily. Check out our neon text tutorial here…
Your city
Getting outside and getting inspired by wherever you are is something we love to do. Since we’re a graphic design agency based in Manchester, we are absolutely surrounded by incredible architecture and art pieces lining the streets. Looking for inspiration in more non-obvious areas like the street outside your office can help you create some refreshingly new ideas. In addition to this “a 2014 study by Stanford found that a person’s creative output increased by an average of 60% when walking.” (Source) So the next time you’re sat at your desk struggling to think of a creative idea to market your new service or product, the answer might be as simple as stepping outside for a bit of inspiration from the world around you.
People
For us at Design Cloud, our in-house team is the best source of support and inspiration when it comes to creative projects. Talking to your colleagues and brainstorming ideas promotes teamwork and gives people in your business the confidence they need to think out-of-the-box without fear of judgement. For any agency owners or marketing managers who might be reading this – this is completely vital to make sure you’re prioritising day-to-day. As the saying goes ‘two heads are better than one’, and a whole team of professionals who can communicate well is going to help you produce even more fantastic results. If you work remotely like we do here at Design Cloud, here’s 3 practical tips to help make sure your team can get inspired by their colleagues every day…
- Set up a slack channel per team – Every team will need to chat about projects and tasks relevant to them, so it’s best to make sure that every department in your business has a communication channel they feel comfortable using to ask questions.
- Have a company-wide communication channel – Whether you have 10 employees or 110, having one company-wide communication channel will help to encourage a sense of togetherness even when working from home. You can use this channel to help build your company culture with fun conversations, trivia, updates throughout the day and to update your team on big company news. Having a place to communicate with your team in a casual way will contribute to a more relaxed and creative workforce.
- Incorporate morning and evening calls – At Design Cloud, we jump on a company-wide call both at the start of the day and at the end. During those calls we can catch up with colleagues and share anything that inspired us that day (we also talk a lot about what we’re going to have for dinner that night!) Doing that helps the team to draw inspiration from each other more.
In this article we’ve discussed 5 places we love to look for creative inspiration, and we hope we’ve given you some more ideas on where you can look too. We’d love to hear what your tried and tested methods are to overcome creative block and keep your content high quality and engaging every time. Remember to keep an eye on the Design Cloud blog for more articles with practical tips like these!
