Overcoming Inspiration Overload
We've all heard of information overload, and most of us recognize that too much data overwhelms rather than educates. It kills our efficiency and distracts us from important tasks. With so much information at our fingertips, even small decisions become difficult. I can lose hours of time on Good Reads sifting through reviews trying to decide what book I should read next. It's fun and interesting, and my choice is well-informed, but I used to visit the library and choose something off the shelf in 5-10 minutes. Is the trade-off really worth it?
Lately I've been noticing a similar phenomenon while designing. The explosion of great CSS galleries and design blogs out there has made it impossible to feel "caught up". There are so many cool things out there to discover... and the possibility of missing something eats at me. So I sift through dozens of blogs every morning, checking out web design galleries and typography samples and droolworthy industrial design projects. I take screenshots of anything striking or unique so I can refer back to it when I need inspiration. At home, I flip through a steady stream of magazines while watching interior design shows on TV. I pick up brochures and viewbooks for things I will never need or want so I can file them away in my giant box-o-inspiration, alongside bits of cool wrapping paper and witty matchbook covers. I can't run an errand at the supermarket without being tempted to buy a product so I can own its packaging.
It's a disease, and if it gets out of hand I'm afraid it will cripple my creativity - not to mention my productivity.
Inspiration is good, don't get me wrong. I'm just worried that too much inspiration has us all designing based on what someone did before that we thought was cool when we should be starting from scratch (or, closer to it at least) and letting our brains do some actual creative thinking. But how do you cut yourself off? How do you stop yourself from "researching" for hours on end?
I've taken a few small steps in the last few weeks. I took most of the CSS inspiration sites off my blog reader, figuring the best-of-the-best will filter through to me no matter what. And I cut back on how long I surf around before jumping into a moodboard or website design. But I feel like I need a more drastic change, or at least a way to stop focusing on the web as my main source of inspiration. It's just not that inspiring anymore, you know?
Anyone have good ideas for getting off the web design hamster wheel?
I recently found myself in a similar trap (you described me exactly!).
I took the time and sat down with my Google Reader. I went through them one by one and looked at how often they update and how good the content actually is.
I then kept the ones that proved themselves worthy and tossed the ones that didn’t make the cut. This has helped tremendously with time management. Now all I have to do is fill the time saved with actual design work....
ahhhh information overload, to think that there was a time when one had to seek out inspiration in the dark corners of magazines and in such exotic places as “Print”, print, the very word scares me. I two have been experiencing the modern plague that is too much inspiration, it’s ultimately made me lazy. I was thinking about this very subject the other week when I returned from vacation and had nearly 1,200 items in the inspiration folder on my RSS reader. It all springs from a tendency to laziness, the lack of desire to get to the heart of a design and pick apart it’s elements so that you might re-use them in your own design.
A typical situation might run like this; Johnny reads “The top 25 Squiggly Swirl Designs” and soon discovers the wonderful world of Squiggly Swirls. Of course Johnny is wanting to utilize Squiggly Swirls in a Semi-Transparent Grunge Design with a purple header, so being the person he is with 100s of galleries and feeds at his disposal, he simply does a search for “Best Squiggly Swirls in Semi-Transparent Grunge Design with a purple header Designs” in his Google Reader and voila he finds “The Top Ten Squiggly Swirls with Semi-Transparent Grunge Backgrounds and Blue Headers”. Which is of course not quite what he was looking for but it’s close enough. Now all he has to do is pull up photoshop use those two lists as a reference and off he goes creating that wonderful design with Squiggly Swirls.
I fall for this same tendency, rather than truly understand a element, trend, or usage, so I can utilize it in my own design. I simply look for another example where a design fits my situation closely enough to eliminate as much original thought or hard work as possible. I’m trying hard to eliminate this habit and truly master things. A truly great designer can find inspiration for his medium anywhere. I know web-designers who can go into a forest and come out with a great nature/earthly web-design. I don’t know if they kill a Dwarf to get it, cut down a tree, or simply sit in the woods and wait for the wind to speak, but what I do know is I want their secret and everyday I’m going to remove a gallery from my RSS feed to bring me one step closer to it.
Frank - yep, cutting down on RSS feeds has been a big time saver for me. Can’t say I miss them, either.
Bookworm - EXACTLY! It’s too easy to jump into ScrnShots or PatternTap or UXRepublic and type in whatever problem you’re trying to solve, like “secondary hav horizontal”, and get ten pages full of examples. It’s great to have a resource when you’re really stuck on something, but downright dangerous when it’s the first step you take before laying down anything in Photoshop.
This is a very important topic, and I think Mindy did a great job at pin-pointing the issue. We are so saturated not only as designers, but as people these days that it’s hard to pull yourself away and have a chance to really take on tasks with a fresh palette.
The way that I clear my mind during the start of a new project is to change up the medium in which I’m designing for. Instead of jumping on the computer I instead find a comfortable spot and start sketching with paper and pencil.
It really allows me to clear my head out while quickly sketching multiple ideas in rapid succession without the worry of being right or wrong. Not only does it free me from settling on a concept to quickly (which I always do while concepting on the computer) but it also yields multiple snippets of ideas that I might be able to flush out later as elements in the site.
I filter CSS gallery feeds through AideRSS which ranks links based on how often it was bookmared on Delicious, the number of results in Google Blog search and so on, to calculate a PostRank. I then take all those new feeds from AideRSS and put them through Yahoo Pipes, I do some regexing to pull the huge image from each feed (rather than the tiny ones they provide) and to get the original site’s URL, so I can bypass the gallery site. I also filter by the AideRSS’s PostRank and only allow things ranked a certain number or higher.
This has kept the feeds I get from galleries to a minimum.
You have to take advantage of AideRSS, FeedRinse and Yahoo Pipes, to keep feeds to a minimum and to filter out the garbage before it shows up in Google Reader.
AideRSS is great for filtering by popularity
FeedRinse is good for filtering by categories (Pipes wont filter a feed correctly if the feed has more than 1 category)
Pipes is a good filter altogether and should be the last in your chain
I quite a few awesome pipes to filter out junk, my Digg Pipes tap into Digg’s API and only pull a few categories and I have several keyword and URL filters to keep the crap at bay. I also update my filters as well, because whenever I get something stupid from Digg, I try to figure out if there is a way to prevent that from coming through. Even with a whitelist of keywords, you will still get junk stories.
I suggest to everyone to start filtering feeds if you aren’t already.
Described me down to a tee also. I feel guilty for allowing myself to get caught up in all of these inspirational galleries, fearing that my own work may unconsciously follow something that has been done recently.
Hi Mindy,
Your article is very pertinent as you hit a real wound: information overload. The lack of tools and better ways to manage this “sea” of information is ruining both our professional and personal lives.
And we don´t have a clear and easy solution for that. Really.
You may try to balance this with a more analogue life. People really need some time out of their digital life. I know, I do.
As for inspiration, I´m a book lover so I will recommend “Ther Art of looking Sideways” by Alan Fletcher… and any book of Jorge Luis Borges. :)
Mindy,
Great post. It’s refreshing to hear that other designers suffer from the same “abundance of inspiration.”
I find it’s best to spend no more than an hour - maybe two - looking through the various galleries, blogs, books, etc. until you find a design that strikes you (and fits the project at hand), and draw your inspiration from that.
It is refreshing (and relieving) to know others feel the same way. :)
Aggressively reducing inspirational inputs in my environment has been very helpful for me in this case. I force myself to mentally process all inspirational material rapidly. Then I delete/give away all but the most essential, relying on my memory to retain the most important bits.
Although I don’t always remember all that I should, the items with the most impact usually remain. It is refreshing to have so little baggage to drag around. Furthermore, it keeps me focused more on my work and less on that of others.
jive - Great idea, I don’t filter down my RSS feeds at all. I’ve been cutting down on the number I subscribe to, but cutting down on the actual content they serve up might be the better solution.
Owen and I had a great chat yesterday about plugging out, as Bruno suggests, and making an effort to start with the basics. A pencil, a piece of paper, and a head full of ideas that are waiting to be tapped. Sketching and brainstorming helps you to think about the concept rather than the embellishments.
I’m also hoping to make some time for the kind of art I used to get lost in. Drawing, painting, sculpting… the hands-on stuff. Maybe sitting in a room with nothing but a blank notepad and a charcoal pencil will be good practice for locking into that creative zone without a single distraction.
I’m on a similar vein as Owen up there ^ I go for my mediums. Paint, chalk, pencil, water colour, ink, and anything interesting i can actually touch… then i mess around for awhile and go back to the comp, usually to scan a bunch of stuff to start building my designs.
I have found myself guilty of the same pleasure. I’ve started setting myself a time limit for blog reading and only keep up with my favorites on a regular basis. When designing and needing inspiration, again, I’ve found a time limit helpful. That way I don’t waste all of the time researching and not designing. I also try to make sure I am getting a healthy balance of internet AND real life inspiration. Sometimes sticking to just the computer can feel so limiting, while going out for lunch may give you the inspiration you never expected.
It’s not information overload. Internet users aim for a higher level of quality because Internet users are constantly exposed to the best of the world, rather than the best of the 50 co-workers and friends they interact with regularly. You and I and everyone else who lives on the web aim higher and can’t help but work harder to get to that higher goal.
I know this isn’t related to your post but I was hoping you could remove “text-shadow:#000000 0pt 0pt 0pt;” from your style sheet. It makes your text look like shit.
I know you probably got that tip from Mr. Inman but it doesn’t look so hot when you put it on a white background.
James, are you viewing it in Safari? I took it off to test, and the change barely seems noticeable to me, but it might look different in different cases.
I don’t visit design galleries. I start drawing; and then I put my ideas on the screen. Every design is designed for the client, but there’s always a good bit of Wolf inside there.
I like to think that separates the men from the boys - a clear mark. I strive not to take cues and bits from others [on purpose]. That is, random cues and bits. I will gladly listen to a well formulated design critique about one of my designs.
Of course what I end up designing is largely influenced by what I see and discover, but I don’t go out hunting for visual interestingness on purpose before I start designing.
Then again, I barely do brochure sites, where moodboards and the like are helpful at least.
I recommend limiting your css intake to a few great ones like bestwebdesigngallery.com and webcreme. In addition, I use Pattern Tap (http://patterntap.com) to isolate particular design elements that I want inspiration for. Backgrounds, Headers, Navigation, Footers, Lists, etc. Pattern Tap is organized UI inspiration. Oh! And I made it ;)
In addition, I recommend getting your inspiration outside of web galleries. Consider following product or illustration feeds, things outside of our discipline help us think in unique ways.
Matt - PatternTap is an awesome resource, thanks for all the hard work on it! I’ve showed it to a lot of designers and developers, because it really does help when you’re working on specific components.
WebCreme is the one design gallery I kept in my RSS reader. PatternTap and ScrnShots are the two sites I use for targeted problem-solving.
Next week I jump into a new design project, and I’m aiming to do the following:
- less up-front mindless surfing for inspiration
- more sketching before hitting Photoshop
- more focused time spent in my comps (less jumping in and out to look at inspiration)
I tend to hit a problem - like, “hmm, how do I want this form’s submit button to look?” - and wander off to the galleries for inspiration even though I have a head full of ideas that would work great. Might have to disable my internet connection to break the cycle ;)
Mindy -
Good thoughts. I think a big part of drawing as I remember it from college was drawing in a loose way. I wonder if it would help people like you and I to work on website thoughts on a large scale instead of a small notepad?
Maybe White board? Maybe a large newsprint roll on a wall? I have a friend that put glass panes up on his wall over white paint, it makes for a SUPER clean white board that cleans much better than traditional whiteboards.
Anyhow, glad that Pattern Tap is a good fit for you. We’ve got some nice changes in store in the next few months :)
ps. its Matthew ;)
Great points. Ironically...it prompted me to subscribe to your feed, so now I have one more subscription. Irony?
I love the glass-as-whiteboard idea. Wouldn’t that make a cool room divider? With safety glass, of course....
oak, I’m pretty sure Inspire is the best design blog on the entire planet, so it’s safe to keep. I subscribe to plenty of feeds - just limiting the gallery types for a while to streamline my design diet!
jeez, i didnt filter my rss at all. what i did is read, read and read. at the end, i feel ready to hit the sack.
jive idea on using technorati based popularity is a great idea. i didnt even know about that.
its a nonsense “indulgence” of informations.
I guess when it comes to whether too much or too little (in this case “inspiration” overload) it all comes down to an equilibrium we have to keep on things.
At first we are designers, and that’s what we do, not “inspirationisters.” So get that pencil and sheet of paper and throw down your design skills. If i feel i need that inspiration to help me out with my design, then i am going to look for it. If i find it, lucky me!! If it takes too long, then i might as well drop it off, because it didn’t work at first.
I think knowing where to start looking and where to stop is a good deal. But knowing if you are looking at the right place, is the best. Because you will know where to stop!
Can we share here a personally rated list of sites to always look at for design inspiration?
Will put mine.
Thanks for putting our site in your collage of thumbnails.
My suggestion is to take a break and maybe lean towards magazines for inspiration. I have found that a lot of our designers(including myself) incorporate that within the process, since you focus on the conceptual structure rather than literal forms.
I just deleted like 10 of my web inspiring sites off of my fav toolbar. I feel so free…
Thanks. Good post.
Less is more.
I’m on the other side of this problem as a designer and right there with you as an artist.
As an artist, I have hundreds of other artists’ sites that I like to check on to see what they are up to and for inspiration. In addition, I also have heaps of sites that cover art and between the two, it’s become stressful in my attempts to stay current with even a small percentage of them. I too have gone through and deleted the subpar, but it’s never enough to make a dent.
As a designer, I have unfortunately taken on so many other non-related duties that Photoshop and the rest of my creative suite are becoming strangers to me. I kid that my graphic design duties are like an island and that I am in a row boat further distancing myself from it as it gets smaller and smaller on the horizon.
As a result of these other @#$% duties, I haven’t kept up on what’s current/cool and was wondering if, in addition to the sites matthew Smith referenced, you could name a few others that are fan favorites.
Thanks and great post!
Shawn H
It is 2:30 AM while I browse your work for my own inspiration… I feel your pain.
great post - funny thing is - I had a little free time and came back to check out your blog, and know very well about the amount of time used up viewing “research” pages.
I think we need to think about design/creativity and figure out things on our own - in relationship to the brief, etc - this will most certainly involve as many hours developing unique solutions - rather than short-cutting to others solutions - sigh - easier said than done! At least for me!
Check out this wonderful radio program on CHOICE and how it is plaguing our lives.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/11/14
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