Hi. I’m Kendal, one of the designers here. Since this is a blog (which is short for “web log” ie. a diary, for the uninitiated) and I’m writing about pretty much whatever I want to, I’m going to drop the formal tone and just write freely. Today I’m thinking about the topic of inspiration. To me, there are a million-ba-jillion different sources of inspiration, and especially now with the wonders of the interweb these are even easier to tap into than before.
As a designer, I use the various sites I’ve found to be inspiring as a starting point in the maze of the design process (Sidenote–I just came up with that analogy of the starting point and maze, and it’s actually a pretty sweet one, points for me). Now here is where the analogy comes in to play for you, Mr/s. Client: The design process is most certainly a maze, one with many different endpoints, some good, many not-so-good. The longer one stays in the maze, and the more skilled at navigating s/he is, the better the chances are for coming out with a great solution. While the exact endpoint, or result of the creative process, can never be predicted with certainty, the starting point can be defined. In fact, the more clearly the starting point is defined, it becomes that much easier to reach a successful “exit” from the maze.
At this point I feel like what I’m saying might make sense to some people, and it definitely makes a ton of sense in my head, but I should probably give a real world example of what the heck I’m talking about. So here goes.
We’ve had clients come to us before saying, “do whatever, I have no clue what we want, we trust you guys to make it look nice.” At first, from a designer’s standpoint, you would think this is a dream situation, with total artistic license granted. Nope. More often than not it turns into one of the more hellish situations we brave designers encounter. This is because just about everyone has some design sensibilities about what they do and do not like. This can be limited to something as simple as colors, shapes, etc. or perhaps as specific as fonts or imagery. By not communicating this to us, it adds to the number of wrong turns we as designers must make before reaching the end of the maze. Conversely, when a client can come to us with examples of what they like, we get a good idea of where they’d like to end up and where we should start in the design process.
So where am I going with all this? Well, I’ve dug into my secret vault full of helpful resources and included a few links that have some great stuff going on.
http://creativity-online.com/?action=adcritic:printdesign
http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/graphicsblog/2007/11/11/the-coolest-business-cards-use-of-cool-shapes-textures-creativity-talent/
The first is AdAge’s design of the day, which is a print piece chosen for its creativity and overall aesthetic. The second link is to a page of great business card designs, showcasing how the most simple of projects can result in some absolutely astounding creativity. These sites are just two in the veritable sea of resources that exist not only on the web, but all around us in the “real” world. Even if, as a client, you come to us saying, “you know that new Mickey D.’s commercial? The one where they’re advertising that sandwich they totally ripped off from Chick-Fil-A? Well I really like the colors they had going on there, and the way they did the text was cool too,” that is a GREAT start compared to the “hands-off” approach.
Enjoy the links!
