Day-in, day-out we are living in a world where a million things are competing for our attention, this “always-on culture” almost never sleeps.
It’s a world that you create, feed and nurture. Be it your following on Instagram, your YouTube subscriptions or daily newsletters you sign up for.
“Solitude is at its greatest premium. As the attention span of an entire generation is decimated to mere seconds, our responsibility to protect our sense of self and our minds has never been more critical.”
For me as a creative, these platforms can be used to fuel creativity or to be kept up to date on what others are doing in the industry. Seeking inspiration and being kept in the loop can be an exciting exercise.
But sometimes you might ask yourself “Do these things feed my creativity or do they all just mash up into one, where you find yourself without any inspiration and a bit confused?”
Having different platforms where inspiration is the main thought I’m pressed with the idea of ‘why inspiration sometimes dilutes the possibility of original ideas and biases your creative thinking’.
Scrolling endlessly on Pinterest seeking inspiration I sometimes find myself with too many ideas competing against one another. Other times I find myself using elements I like which can result in the possibility of my work looking like a combination of everyone else’s and not really being ‘original’.
It’s important as a designer to seek inspiration, let that inspiration create new thoughts and for that to be the way you go about introducing your creative feed into your creative process.
Whether your creative process of ‘getting into the zone’ is browsing the net, doodling, going for a run or blasting ‘Moonlight Sonata’ in a dim-lit room, you need to find a place of least distraction for ideas
to distill.
Stepping back once in a while, to disconnect, perhaps even to ‘unfollow’ and ‘unsubscribe’ can be a way to be more in the present. With a clearer mind, we have the ability to gain inspiration, being creative and more productive.
Everyone has a different creative process, and there are many ways we all generate ideas. For me, it’s all about balance, we control what we get exposed to and it’s a personal choice to allow yourself to become either inspired or overwhelmed by the now.
