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If there’s anything worse than an individual creative slump, it’s when your entire team or studio is drawing blanks. Deadlines don’t care about mental blocks, and neither will your creative team once they start implementing these five can’t-miss, real-world inspiration boosting strategies.
1. Structure Your Brainstorming Sessions
Some unique and inspired designs are only possible in an environment of structured chaos. It’s not an oxymoron – you impose rules like short ideation rounds and stick to prompts, but place no boundaries on team members’ creative freedom otherwise.
The goal is to capture as many relevant ideas as possible at the beginning, even if they seem outlandish. UI/UX teams might focus on making website design elements more engaging, while branding specialists could suggest identity pivots based on a few descriptive words. You’ll end up with a jumble of ideas of varying viability. That’s the point! You can then shape a few of them into something tangible.
2. Reverse-Engineer the Competition
You don’t need to do everything from scratch, especially if the competition already has a killer presentation. Of course, outright copying is off the table. However, you can gain a lot of insight by analyzing elements that work and spotting omissions you can exploit to draw attention.
For example, a deep dive into a competitor’s visual identity can help jumpstart your own. Maybe their appealing illustration style can serve as the basis for your unique ideas. Elements of their visual identity, like their logo and typography, might be behind the times. Double down on making yours current.
3. Get in the Mood
References are the cornerstone of every good design. On their own, they’re also just unstructured data that doesn’t push creativity forward. On the other hand, moodboards structure reference gathering, guiding teams to curate their choices and examine them in the context of a set design goal.
Copywriters might collect examples of playful customer interactions, CTAs, or blog snippets that resonate with their brand’s identity. Illustrators might search for examples where clever use of color palettes conveys a project’s tone or deeper meaning. When created with intention, moodboards become exhaustive references to draw inspiration from without copying the contents outright.
4. Have AI Assist with Early Ideation
Creatives’ relationship with artificial intelligence can be prickly. However, it’s all about the mindset. AI can’t replace your creativity or the years of experience and attention to detail that elevate your craft over whatever a prompt spits out. That said, AI can be a fantastic tool for shattering those stubborn mental blocks, especially at the earliest stages.
Have a logo in mind, but no real-world references come close? Generate a dozen variants and use the best as a jumping-off point. Or, have it interpret a vague idea in a variety of styles to help you pin down a project’s visual identity. And if you’re worried about data leaks, using AI guardrails and observability tools ensures your inputs stay protected throughout the workflow. Properly used AI won’t diminish your skills. Instead, it will help you come up with a baseline to put those skills to use.
5. Get Inspired by Other Industries
Drawing inspiration from others in your field can be challenging if everyone is chasing trends and only coming up with minor variations on the same theme. Why not ditch the tunnel vision and have your team set its sights on other industries instead?
Innovative and unexpected results usually follow! For example, you can inject some class or dynamism into generic product packaging by following trends established in the fashion and automotive industries. Looking to liven up a stale website? Then take staple elements from gaming interfaces like achievement pop-ups that motivate visitors to sign up for a newsletter or explore the website in detail.
Either way, the principle is to familiarize yourself with distinct elements from other industries, see which ones translate well to yours, then adapt and iterate until you hit gold.
Every day, I write blogs about Joomla! and WordPress, assist others in creating beautiful websites using these CMS platforms, and provide support on the Joomla Support Board as a Joomla Guru in the forum.
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