Improving your Inspiration.

With the sheer amount of content on the internet, it’s almost impossible not to find something that inspires you, no matter what field you might be working in. But just because something is in your field doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best inspiration for you. Just like you have to eat healthily, to produce the best work, you want to have the best thoughts which means getting the best inspiration for you. In this article we’ll explore some exciting new methods for gathering your creative food-for-thought.

I  used to be one of those poeple who used to say I didn’t like looking at the work of others because I knew I would be inspired by it in some way and that would make my work less authentic. Well, I admit, I was wrong because no matter how authentic any idea seems it is always going to be a combination of thoughts from someone, somewhere, somehow. So when I finally gave up that mode of thought, I began purposefully looking for things to inspire me.

But what I noticed was I didn’t discriminate so much as to what I would save in my favourites or sketchbook etc. As long as it was in the same field as what I was doing it would get collected. What quickly happened was that I ended up with lots of piles of material that I really had no emotional connection or interest in. So slowly I started going through them and taking out the ones that I really didn’t like and gradually I became like a curator of my own little museum.

Now with the power of the internet, collecting materials from newspapers and magazines is done less and less often  and I quickly can fill up entire USB keys and folders with digital files, but now at least I know what I like to collect, and why I like it, so I can open the folder and everything in there resonates with me, which gears me up and makes me feel the urge to create.

Still, the main advantage of collecting clippings and images in real space was that I could stick them together, collage them, put them on the wall, view them at a glance and so on. And there is nothing quite like having several pieces of work staring at you that all inspire you, it’s like being outside on a hot day when the sun shines.

But if a physical collection is sometimes not possible, I’d then have to do it digitally, and for that my favourite method of inspiring myself is a relatively new site called Image Spark.

Basically you install an add-on to your browser (or upload from your hard drive) and you can right click and save your images to the Image Spark service, which displays everything you have collected in a rather snazzy layout, so at a glance you can see all the things which inspire and resonate with you in some way, just like having them on your wall or right out in front of you.

“…you wouldn’t believe how much of a difference it makes, because it brings you closer to being able to effectively communicate what it is you’re about and what you are trying to create.”

It sounds simple, but you wouldn’t believe how much of a difference it makes, because it brings you closer to being able to effectively communicate what it is your about and what you are trying to create. For example I went over to my Image Spark account the other day and noticed that I’m been saving alot of typography and graphic design related images as opposed to photographs. Furthermore there is definitely a pattern in terms of the composition and colours of the images I’m selecting (more muted, mostly have the font Helvetica and are minimalist)

For true rocket fuel, I use Image Spark with a website called Ffffound, which is pretty much the worst site you can go to if you have something you want to get done. The premise is very simple. A select number of invited participants upload images which inspire them in a feed (like a visual Twitter) and you click on the image you like and it shows you  more similar images, and before you know it you’re following links here and there and finding amazing new images.

So a good recipe for quickly collecting images to help inspire you are using Image Spark (www.imgspark.com) in conjunction with Ffffound (www.ffffound.com) (thats four f’s). Other excellent visual feeds include the excellent Dropular (www.dropular.com) and Notcot (www.notcot.org)