Boosting Up Your Creativity Without Endless Reference Scrolling

 

Product design requires a balance between logic and creativity. This balance results in products that not only meet technical and user requirements but also deliver a captivating user experience. While it is clear that creativity is driven by both the left and right hemispheres, an important question remains: how can we boost creativity while keeping the process enjoyable? It may not be obvious, but non-design-related activities can, in fact, be an opportunity to enhance creativity.

The work of a designer largely consists of inventing new things, which requires creativity that is generally believed to depend on inspiration, making it unpredictable and difficult to control. Many designers, as well as those who would like to try their hand at design, are wondering: what to do if inspiration does not come at the right moment?

There are many practical recommendations from experienced designers and design managers on how to work without inspiration. These mainly rely on discipline, planning, and working with references. I would like to suggest an alternative approach: how to boost creativity and “lure” inspiration with the help of neuroscience.

I’m Marina, and I have been deeply interested in neuroscience for a long time. I have tried many methods from my own experience and observed the experience of my colleagues. In this article, I want to share the ways that seemed to me the most effective in luring creativity, which I eventually built into my life routine on an ongoing basis.

How Our Brain Works

The brain has been and remains an important topic that is underexplored, especially in the context of design and design thinking. No other profession represents the blend of creativity and logic quite like design, in my opinion. This raises a fair question: which part of the brain is more important, the left or the right? To start with, let’s briefly refresh which part of the brain is responsible for what:

Left Hemisphere	Right Hemisphere
Language and Speech: Language-related activities like speaking, writing, and comprehension	Creativity and Artistic Abilities: Imagination, creative thinking, music, visual arts, etc.
Analytical Thinking: Mathematical operations, sequential processing, and problem-solving	Emotional Processing: Emotion recognition, facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures
Linear Thinking: Step-by-step way of information processing	Holistic Thinking: Looking at the big picture rather than focusing on details

While each part of the brain is responsible for certain functions, they work together to process information. For some activities (analyzing data, solving equations, and working with precise calculations), it might be more important to rely on the left hemisphere, while for others (composing music, acting), the right hemisphere.

However, when it comes to the design process and design thinking, it’s essential to stimulate both hemispheres and not limit the role of a product designer to being either predominantly left- or right-brained.

Interhemispheric Interaction In Product Design: Why Are Both Equally Important?

In product design, the need for well-established interhemispheric interaction is especially noticeable since this work requires a balance between logic and creativity. The left hemisphere’s logical functions help designers break down complex problems, analyze user needs, and organize structured workflows, ensuring the product’s functionality and usability.

For example, logical processes are crucial in creating wireframes and user flows and adhering to technical constraints. On the other side, the right hemisphere’s creative and spatial abilities play a critical role in developing visually appealing designs and innovative user experiences. It’s extremely important for a designer to think outside the box and solve user problems without forgetting about the balanced and attractive visual part at the same time.

A harmonious interaction between the two hemispheres allows product designers to seamlessly integrate both practical functionality and creative innovation. This balance results in products that not only meet technical and user requirements but also deliver an enjoyable, intuitive, and visually captivating user experience.

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The Relevance Of This Subject

The idea that two parts of the brain are interconnected and complement each other during creative tasks isn’t new, nor is it my invention. One of the most influential works for product designers is Experiences in Visual Thinking by Robert H. McKim, an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering. The value of this book lies in the author’s attempt to explain visual thinking through the lenses of psychology, neurology, semantics, art, and perception. This work was later included in Stanford University’s list of recommended readings for engineering and art design students, further highlighting its significance beyond the field of design.

In the context of the brain’s left and right hemispheres, the author explains and demonstrates through a range of experiments that, to achieve productive thinking — the kind that leads to creative actions — we need to achieve an “internal transfer” between the so-called rational and intuitive halves of the brain. In our thinking process, to achieve creativity, we need to build bridges to “integrate the artist and scientist within each one of us.”

He offers a series of exercises (“3-1/Food for Thought,” “3-2/Dominant Eye,” “3-3/Internal Transfer”) that demonstrate that both brain hemispheres complement each other in cognition and creativity, and he offers to practice them to achieve the so-called “internal transfer”.

One of the simplest exercises offered by McKim is the “3-2/Dominant Eye”. Look at the picture and try to describe what you see:

If you see a duck first (most people see it first) — your left hemisphere is more active. This is because the left hemisphere was activated before reading. If you see a rabbit — often after it’s mentioned — your right hemisphere is more active. This exercise shows that we can consciously choose to shift between hemispheres, training ourselves to engage either side more effectively.

In his work, Professor H. McKim not only demonstrates how to activate the left or right hemisphere but also explains the complementary modes of thought, which consist of two stages. The first stage involves generating an array of ideas, often through a visual thinking process, while the second stage focuses on selecting and refining these ideas (or objects) for further development. Creativity is born during the first stage, but to be executed tangibly, it requires the second stage. Even mathematicians do not only think in terms of mathematical symbols; many, particularly creative ones, use vague images and visuals as part of their thought processes.

According to McKim, creativity requires a balanced development of both hemispheres, as creative thinkers are ambidextrous and capable of transferring ideas into actionable steps. Another important aspect of visual thinking is the right environment, which leads to creativity. McKim describes it as “relaxed attention” — a mental state where ideas emerge spontaneously. Relaxed attention is often achieved through side activities like meditation, taking breaks, physical relaxation, and engaging in non-linear thinking, such as doodling or daydreaming.

I will further share my perspective on enhancing creativity through side activities and present my top three mental and physical occupations. However, it’s important to understand the complementary nature of our brain and how visual thinking often stems from diverse activities and practices.

What Helps Creativity

While it is clear that creativity is driven by both the left and right hemispheres, an important question remains: how can we boost creativity while keeping the process enjoyable? It may not be obvious, but non-design-related activities can, in fact, be an opportunity to enhance creativity.

Physical Activity

The interconnection between our body, mind, and thinking process might be key to awakening creativity. Motor skills are controlled by both hemispheres, with the right hemisphere controlling the left side of the body and the left hemisphere controlling the right side. But it also works in the opposite direction — movements trigger active brain activity.

Sports that combine the need to develop a strategy while also requiring active movement may work best for turning up creativity.

Understanding the intricacies of the brain highlights the importance of integrating all parts of the brain. In order to learn, you must first have a sensory experience, then reflect and make connections. Finally, you must take action based on the experience. The knowledge that your first movements, even inside the womb, help build your brain underscores the fact that you actually move to learn. In other words, movement is essential to learning. (Source: Anne Green Gilbert. Brain-Compatible Dance Education, 2019)

Here are the top activities that positively impact creativity, and I will explain why they have this effect.

Tennis

The basis of a good game is a well-thought-out and trained strategy. Tennis requires a quick analysis of the situation, prompt decisions, and maximum involvement. No wonder this sport is called “chess in motion”: in the process, it is developing memory, concentration, and strategic thinking. At the same time, working in a group and communicating during workouts help reduce stress levels and improve mood.

Table tennis also develops concentration. The need to memorize combinations, develop motor skills, visual and motor types of memory, and compare the opponent’s movements, speed, angle of flight of the ball, and its rotational force form the basis of a successful game. It is suitable for those who do not have the opportunity to play lawn tennis.

I asked several designers if they do any of these things in their free time and how they think it affects their productivity and professional skills. Here is what they’ve shared:

“I started playing tennis a couple of years ago. I work out once or twice a week individually with a coach or in a group. This is a sport that requires high concentration during the game. It seems to me that this skill helped me in my work as well; before that, I was often distracted, and it was difficult for me to do the same task for a long time.

At the same time, due to the fact that I have to fully concentrate during the game, I manage to switch from everyday problems and unload my brain. I prefer to play in the morning or afternoon and take a break from work. Therefore, I return to work more energetically and can take a fresh look at my tasks.”

— Ilia Kanazin, Product Designer with 7+ years of experience working in SaaS

Dance

Dance challenges the brain by requiring the integration of movement, rhythm, coordination, and memory, which promotes neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to form new neural connections. The more varied the movement patterns and rhythmic complexities, the more the brain is stimulated to adapt and reorganize. Neuroplasticity has a positive effect on memory capacity, learning abilities, and problem-solving skills, which are good for the design process.

At the same time, cognitive flexibility supports the developed design because you always need to adjust your decisions, getting new data from user testing and feedback from the stakeholders. Dancers often have to improvise or adapt to changes in the rhythm and conditions. Also, they constantly learn new movements and combinations of them. Such experience in choreography and expression develops connections between hemispheres, which influences a person’s ability to think creatively in general.

Balance Exercises #

In my opinion, the balance board is one of the most convenient and affordable home simulators. With its help, you can do a short workout at any time to take a break from long work and return to work with a fresh look.

Board balance exercises can be quite diverse. It can be added to your usual exercises and diversified with squats, exercises with a slight weight on the upper body, or shoulder and neck warm-up, which will increase cognitive activity as a result.

You can also just stand on the balance board while listening to work calls, which don’t require active participation, watching TV shows, or chatting on the phone with friends.

Case Study #

“By training your body to move more creatively, you train your mind to think more creatively.”

— Jennifer Heisz. Move The Body, Heal The Mind, 2022

While it may be challenging to find documented real-life cases that provide clear examples of famous designs fueled by sport and physical activity, there are historically backed examples and research studies demonstrating that physical activity positively influences creativity.

For example, Charles Darwin’s “Thinking Path”. The scientist developed his most famous works, “On the Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man,” at Down House, where he took daily walks. This activity is known as Darwin’s Thinking Path, and it is well-documented how his walking routine influenced the way he contemplated his scientific theories.

With the emergence of neuroscience as a science in the mid-20th century, we have gained a new perspective on what drives creative thinking, which is ultimately beneficial for design. Neuroscience provides insights into how various activities influence the brain, which, as a result, leads to changes in other fields.

For example, tennis is recognized for its benefits to brain health. It enhances the ability to process sensory information rapidly, improving overall cognitive processing speed and reaction time. In addition, strategic thinking is required in this game and engages the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s hub for decision-making and strategic planning. And we can see how this single activity demonstrates the far-reaching cognitive benefits of physical exercise.

Nowadays, researchers in neuroscience are united in their opinion on what unleashes creativity — physical activity unlocks it. There are even experiments that measure it: Marily Oppezzo, a behavioral and learning scientist at Stanford, studied how walking affects creativity. Her experiment compared walking on a treadmill, walking outdoors, sitting indoors and outdoors, and being pushed in a wheelchair. Surprisingly, even treadmill walking in a dull room boosted creativity by 60% compared to sitting.

“It’s not specific activities but individuals’ experiences of them that determine their effect.”

— Amir-Homayoun Javadi, Associate Professor at the University of Kent

Another study goes further, explaining that not all sports impact creativity to the same extent.

“It may surprise you — it wasn’t artistic sports but net and combat sports. Why? Because cultivating a creative mind depends on how we train. In artistic sports (figure skating, gymnastics, synchronized swimming), athletes memorize a series of predefined steps. Although creating these routines may involve creativity, the training itself is structured, predictable, and planned.”

Training that is mostly predictable makes our brain less mentally flexible, in contrast to net and combat sports (such as badminton, tennis, volleyball, and fencing), which make us learn to act instinctively. As we train physically, our brain also adapts, becoming more flexible — particularly in terms of cognitive flexibility. This, in turn, enhances our creativity. (Source: Jennifer Heisz. Move The Body, Heal The Mind, 2022)

Mental Activity #

However, physical activity is not the only way to achieve a ‘relaxed attention’ state and learn to balance the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Mental activities also trigger the same process. I have selected the top 3 activities that will enhance your creativity at work.

Learning Foreign Languages #

As we discussed above, during the design process, both brain hemispheres are used, and when you’re learning foreign languages, it leads to similar processes in your brain, so you train it through similar activities.

Language processing primarily occurs in the left hemisphere, but emotional intonation and context (e.g., sarcasm, tone) are understood by the right hemisphere. When someone says “Oh, great!” after receiving bad news, the left hemisphere processes the words and grammar, understanding the literal meaning, while the right hemisphere interprets the tone and context, allowing the person to get the real point of the message.

Learning a second language exposes people to new methods of expressing the same thoughts, which promotes creativity. Finding synonyms, understanding idiomatic terms, and gaining the ability to flip between languages all promote divergent thinking, which is the ability to generate several solutions to a given problem.

In parallel, learning foreign languages helps to develop storytelling and self-presentation skills, which are also very useful in a designer’s work.

“I’ve lived in several countries for a long time, so in addition to my native language, I speak three other foreign languages as well. It helps me to build communication with different people, which is very important in the designer’s work.

I think because I know how to say the same thing in different languages, I also use this approach in design. To solve the same problem, I can offer several solutions and choose the most appropriate one together with the stakeholders.

Now I am a Senior Growth Designer, and this job requires constantly looking for non-standard solutions and implementing them quickly. I think the use of different languages contributes to this from the point of view of brain function.

Speaking multiple languages also comes really handy when you are dealing with personas from different nationalities. For example, Western Saas products use a more minimalist approach, whereas Saas from Asia or China, for example, more information is better than less.”

— Maxence Akodjenou, Senior Growth Designer (working on complex B2B apps)

Maxence’s project screenshot (Large preview)

Board Games #

Table games develop strategic thinking, require players to anticipate opponents’ moves, solve problems in real-time, and sometimes think outside the box. Traditional games like chess encourage critical thinking, as players must analyze the current situation, weigh potential outcomes, and decide on the best course of action. This improves the brain’s executive functions, including decision-making, planning, and strategic thinking.

Some tabletop games are based on role-playing or storytelling, such as Dungeons & Dragons or Dixit. These games encourage players to invent stories, create characters, and navigate imaginative scenarios, fostering creative thinking and imagination.

Board games also train communication skills, which product designers have to use a lot in their jobs. Playing table games, especially in groups, encourages the participants to convince their teammates of their decisions and carefully listen to others. The games that involve cooperation help the players develop their collaboration skills, such as finding compromises, negotiating, and making concessions.

Music Lessons #

Playing a musical instrument has been a widely researched topic in neuroscience in recent decades. It has been proven that music lessons improve cognitive abilities by improving the neural connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which leads to a positive effect on memory, learning ability, and non-verbal thinking, as a result of which the brain as a whole works much more productively in other areas of life.

The brain learns to hear and interpret sounds, which happens only while playing an instrument and is impossible while simply listening to music. As a result, a person is better able to process complex information. Playing musical instruments involves the relationship between the motor, sensory, auditory, visual, and emotional components of the central and peripheral nervous systems. Such brain training includes artistic and aesthetic aspects of learning, which is a unique feature of playing a musical instrument. The combination of linguistic and mathematical activity in the left hemisphere gets used to working in coordination with creative functions in the right hemisphere.

An interesting fact: Albert Einstein often played the violin during moments of deep thinking, claiming that music was an extension of his thought process and helped him solve particularly difficult problems.

A Lesson From Paul Klee #

It is worth noting that it works both ways — both your music lessons enhance your creativity in design, and design pushes your success in music.

In the book Enchanted Neurons, Pierre Boulez, French composer and conductor, talks about the lessons that Paul Klee (Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism) taught at the Bauhaus (German art school which became famous for its approach to design based on unifying individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function).

“Theoretical reflection is particularly interesting to me when it is applied to something that is completely foreign to music because it then makes it possible to discover solutions that you would never have found if you had remained bound by the limits of your art.

I’ll give you a personal example: the discovery not only of Klee’s painting but also the lessons that he gave at the Bauhaus, which we spoke about earlier, was extremely important to me, especially from the point of view of composition. I understood how using very simple elements like two motifs made it possible to think about the way in which these two motifs could interact. I remember, in particular, an exercise given by Klee to his students: a straight line and a circle. That’s it. The exercise consisted of trying to invent something, a meeting of this line and this circle.”

— Pierre Boulez, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Manoury. Enchanted Neurons, 2020

This lesson shared by Pierre Boulez demonstrates how interdisciplinary inspiration — such as the course of visual artist Paul Klee — shaped his creative process and how concepts from outside music can lead to new solutions.

In my opinion, the reverse can also be true: music and its principles can inspire creativity in other disciplines.

“I started composing music even earlier than I started designing. Music has a composition and rhythm-like design. And development in one area also entails a boost in another. It works both ways; success in music develops my design skills. Design helps me make more complex music.

In addition, there is also a practical benefit; I make my own covers for my tracks and use my tracks for my showcases. Plus, I listen to a lot of different music, and it develops my world perception, fills me with energy, and creates the right mood for working on projects.”

— Sergei Diuzhev, Design Leader at MuseScore

Sergei’s project screenshot (Large preview)

Tips For Incorporating A Routine That Sustains Designer’s Creativity #

Whenever you feel stuck in your work or overly critical of your designs or prototype, think about the strategies from the above that might help your creative process.

1. Find something you genuinely enjoy or have always wanted to try and implement in small steps.
   It doesn’t need to be a completely new hobby. For example, you could dance to your favorite music at home, stand on a balance board between work calls, or try something new once a month or quarter with friends, like skating, rock climbing, or other activities. This year, I plan to go skiing for the first time.
2. Constantly explore new things, even small ones.
   Take different routes to work, cook new dishes, or listen to unfamiliar music. Even if you don’t end up loving it, it’s still valuable because your brain is enriched by the experience.
3. Meet new people.
   As I mentioned earlier, communication skills are essential for designers, but beyond that, new people can inspire you in unexpected ways. They might introduce you to a new sport, hobby, or activity that you could even try together.

I shared examples of designers who have rebuilt their creativity through activities like tennis, music, and languages, and I feel the impact in my own daily routine when I try new things and hobbies. Whatever approach you decide to follow, I guarantee your brain will feel the difference and reward you with fresh ideas and inspiration.

Conclusion #

Creativity may be developed in a variety of ways, including browsing reference sites and putting in a lot of practice — both of which are important. Outside these classic ways, you can engage in activities that not only promote creativity but also improve your mental and physical health.

There are many possibilities for increasing brain activity, and you can develop your own entertaining and useful ways of spending time. Finally, trying something new will generate new thoughts and break down the monotony.

When you experience virtual reality, read poetry or fiction, see a film, listen to a piece of music, or move your body to dance, to name a few of the many arts, you are biologically changed. There is a neurochemical exchange that can lead to what Aristotle called catharsis, or a release of emotion that leaves you feeling more connected to yourself and others afterward. (Source: Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross. Your Brain on Art, 2023)

Visual Weight And Direction

Every element on a web page exerts a visual force that attracts the eye of the viewer. The greater the force, the more the eye is attracted. These forces also appear to act on other elements, imparting a visual direction to their potential movement and suggesting where you should look next.
We refer to this force as visual weight and to the perceived direction of visual forces as visual direction. Both are important concepts to understand if you want to create hierarchy, flow, rhythm and balance in your composition.

Visual Weight

Physical weight is a measure of the force that gravity exerts on an object, but two-dimensional objects (such as elements on a web page) don’t have mass and, therefore, don’t have any physical weight. Visual weight is a measure of the force that an element exerts to attract the eye. Two-dimensional objects can attract attention. The more an element attracts the eye, the greater its visual weight.


For example, contrasting elements by making one very big and the other very small makes it clear that the elements are different.
Controlling the combination of these features is how you control visual weight. Red tends to attract the eye more than blue, and larger elements attract the eye more than smaller ones. A large red object carries more visual weight than a small blue object.
The sum of these characteristics or primitive features is what determines an element’s visual weight. It’s not any one feature, but rather their combination that determines the visual weight of an element. Some combinations of features will attract the eye more than others. To create elements of different visual weight, you would use different combinations of primitive features.

How Do You Measure Visual Weight?

There’s no way I know of to precisely measure the visual weight of a design element. You use your experience and judgment to determine which elements have greater or lesser weight. Develop an eye and then trust it. The areas of a composition that attract your eye are those that have greater visual weight. Learn to trust your eye.
This doesn’t mean that you have to randomly try things and see what attracts your eye the most and the least. You can isolate each characteristic to know that something bigger weighs more than something smaller, for example. It’s in the combination of features that your eye will help.
Fortunately, others have isolated and tested these characteristics. Below are some of the characteristics you can change on any element and a description of how changing them will either increase or decrease the element’s visual weight.
Let’s start with the primitive features that I mentioned in the last post: size, color, value, position, texture, shape and orientation.

• Size
  Large elements have more visual weight than small elements.
• Color
  Warm colors advance into the foreground and tend to weigh more than cool colors, which recede into the background. Red is considered the heaviest color and yellow the lightest.
• Value
  Dark elements have more visual weight than light elements.
• Position
  Elements located higher in the composition are perceived to weigh more than elements located lower in the composition. The further from the center or dominant area of a composition, the greater the visual weight an element will carry. Elements in the foreground carry more weight than elements in the background.
• Texture
  Textured elements appear heavier than non-textured objects. Texture makes an element appear three-dimensional, which gives the appearance of mass and physical weight.
• Shape
  Objects with a regular shape appear heavier than objects with an irregular shape. The irregularity gives the impression that mass has been removed from a regular shape.
• Orientation
  Vertical objects appear heavier than horizontal objects. Diagonal elements carry the most weight.

You don’t have to limit yourself to the primitive features above. You can use additional characteristics to control visual weight.

• Density
  Packing more elements into a given space increases the visual weight of the space. The viewer will perceive a larger or darker combined element as opposed to several smaller and lighter elements.
• Local white space
  White space appears to have no visual weight because it’s seen as empty. Any object placed within that space will seem heavier because of the space around it.
• Intrinsic interest
  Some things are more interesting than others. The more complex or intricate an element, the more interest it will draw and the more it will attract the eye. Your own interests also play a role. If you’re more interested in cars than in planes, then an image of a car will grab your attention more than an image of a plane.
• Depth
  A larger depth of field gives an element in focus increased visual weight, likely due to the contrast between the focus and unfocused areas.
• Saturation
  Saturated colors appear heavier than desaturated colors.
• Perceived physical weight
  We know that a house weighs more than a shoe. An image of a house will weigh more visually than an image of a shoe, because we expect the house to weigh more.

In the previous post in this series about contrast and similarity, I mentioned that contrast draws attention to an element. In other words, an element that contrasts with its surroundings will appear visually heavier than its surroundings. For example, circles usually appear heavier than rectangles on a web page because most website elements are rectangular.
Not all characteristics contribute equally to visual weight. Most people will notice the color of an element before its shape, which suggests that color contributes more to visual weight. You also have to consider the uniqueness of a given composition, because contrasting elements appear weightier than the elements they contrast with. The specifics of your composition will determine what contrasts and what doesn’t.
Remember that visual weight is a combination of the above attributes. While big carries more visual weight than small, a small dark circle surrounded by a generous amount of white space and located at the top of the page will likely appear to weigh more than a larger yet irregularly shaped object of a cool light color at the bottom of the page.

Visual Weight and Gestalt

One of the ideas behind this series is to point out how much gestalt principles contribute to design principles.

• Figure-ground
  Visual weights can be used to separate the two by giving the figure more weight than the background.
• Proximity
  The space between elements leads to different amounts of local white space and different densities of the objects within the space.
• Similarity and contrast
  You can use visual weight to signal either. Contrast will lead to greater visual weight in the contrasting element. Elements with similar visual weight will naturally exhibit similarity.
• Focal point (the next topic in the series)
  Points of attraction in a composition are focal points, and they carry more visual weight than other elements.
• Past experience
  The viewer’s experience will contribute to how much intrinsic interest they think an element holds.

Visual Direction

If visual weight is about attracting the eye to a particular location, then visual direction is about leading the eye to the next location. Visual direction is the perceived direction of visual forces. Think of it as the direction you would expect an element to move if it were in motion.
Visual direction serves a similar function to visual weight in that it’s trying to get you to notice certain parts of the composition. Whereas visual weight is shouting “Look at me!,” visual direction is saying “Look over there!”
As with visual weight, you can modify the characteristics of an element to suggest different directions, although fewer characteristics are at your disposal than with weight.

• Shape of element
  An element’s shape might create an axis through it and this axis can suggest a direction. The prime axis is typically seen as running parallel to an element’s visual direction.
• Location of elements
  Visual weight is a force that can appear to attract or repel a neighboring element. This force will move in a direction that connects both elements.
• Subject matter of element
  An arrow, a pointing finger, or the gaze of the eye all suggest looking in a certain direction.
• Movement
  An element could literally move through your design, and its movement will have a direction.
• Structural skeleton
  Every composition has a structural skeleton, with forces that naturally run along and through different axes. This probably needs a little more explanation.

Structural Skeletons

In his book Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, Rudolf Arnheim proposed the idea of a structural skeleton behind every canvas.
The idea is that every canvas has a structural network of forces running through it. Even if no elements are inside the canvas, our eye will be drawn to certain parts of the canvas because of this network of forces.

The center and the four corners of a rectangular canvas act like magnets to the eye. The strongest magnet is in the center, though not the geometric center of the canvas. Rather, the center that attracts the eye is the optical center, and it sits just above the true geometric center.
The axes run from corner to corner, and the points along these axes that are midway between center and corner also attract attention. These midway points can, then, be connected with vertical and horizontal lines, which create additional axes of visual force.
We’ll come back to this idea when we get to the post in the series about compositional flow. For now, consider that, in the absence of design, a viewer’s eye will be attracted to certain points in Arnheim’s structural skeleton, and the eye will move from point to point by following the directions of the different axes.
You can make use of the structural net by placing elements where they would naturally attract the eye, thereby increasing their attractive force.

Visual Direction and Gestalt

You can think of direction as real or imaginary lines that point from one element to another or that connect different elements. The lines don’t need to be visible.

• Uniform connectedness
  The lines connecting elements have direction. An eye gaze creates an imaginary line between the eye and whatever the eye is gazing at.
• Continuation
  This principle relates to elements arranged along a line or curve, as though they are moving in the direction of the line or curve.
• Common fate
  Elements seen as having a common fate are those that move or appear to move in the same direction.
• Parallelism
  In order for elements to be seen as parallel, their internal axes (the same ones that impart direction) must be established.

The Overall Direction Of A Composition

One more concept of visual direction is that every composition will be seen to have a dominant direction, whether horizontal, vertical or diagonal.

• A horizontal direction makes the composition appear calm and stable.
• A vertical direction adds a sense of formality, alertness and balance.
• A diagonal direction suggests movement and action.

The dominant direction of a composition will be established by the direction of the majority of elements or perhaps a few key elements. The direction will help set a general mood according to the general meaning ascribed to different types of lines.
It is possible for a composition to have no dominant direction. The number of horizontal and number of vertical elements might be equal, for example. In this case, the viewer could decide which direction is dominant.

Examples

For the following examples, I’ve grabbed some screenshots of pages and will share some thoughts on how I see visual weight distributed in each. You might see it differently, and that’s OK.
Different eyes are attracted to different things. Again, I’m aware of no way to measure how much visual weight an element carries. Besides, two people could easily look to different areas of a composition because of their different interests. A bit of subjectivity is to be expected.
An easy way to tell which elements have the most weight is to use the squint test. Close your eyes a little until some elements fade away. Those that remain have more visual weight than those that disappear.

Bureau

Note: The screenshot for Bureau was captured with my browser set wider than 1280 pixels. Anything less and the design would collapse to a single column, instead of the two seen here.

Links gain some weight through their contrast with the surrounding text, although the cool color lessens the gain in my opinion.
The element with the least visual weight is the text in the right column. This makes sense because focus is most likely meant to be given to the article and not what’s in the sidebar.
Notice the small bit of red text at the top of the right column. It’s a link to the home page of the website. As small as it is, the red gives the text some additional weight, helping it to stand out from the other text in the column. Everything in the image appears larger when you’re viewing the website directly, so the small red text isn’t quite as small as it is here.
When you apply the squint test, the whole right column disappears, and you’re left with the main heading above the article and a large block of text below it.
The main direction of the composition is vertical because it’s two long columns down the page. The difference in background color between the columns creates a vertical line leading you down the page and adding to the vertical direction of the composition.

Create Digital Media

When the home page for Create Digital Media loads, the colorful elements animate into place, calling a lot of attention to themselves. Even if you miss the animation, you likely see these elements as carrying the most weight, due to the saturated pink, yellow and blue. These elements also occupy the same space, creating a dense area in the middle of empty space.
Note: Between the writing and publication of this post, Create Digital Media has closed its doors. Visit its home page if you’d like to know why.
The graphics at the bottom are the next weightiest for me. They’re dark, large and complex in shape. They pull you to each of the three sections, which contain the next most visually prominent elements, the section headings.
The main headline on the page is large and dark; compare it to the text directly below it. Other items that stand out for me, due to their higher visual weight, are the company’s name at the top and the logo at the bottom.
With the squint test, the colored shapes and text and the graphics at the bottom remain after most of the elements have faded away. The main headline fades for me, although I can still tell it’s there. I also somewhat notice the logo in the lower-left corner, although it fades much more quickly than the graphic near it.
Here, I think the main direction is horizontal. The lines run horizontally, as does the main heading and the navigation. Another of the more visually prominent elements, the highlighted text, is also horizontal.
The three gears could be regarded as a single triangular, albeit curvy, shape, thus establishing diagonal directions. They don’t run long, though, and they’re the only diagonals on the page.

Javier Marta

Three elements compete to be the visually weightiest on Javier Marta’s home page. The graphics, the green separators between sections, and the menu items at the top all call for attention.

• Graphics
  These are large, dark and surrounded by white space. Each graphic intrinsically hold its own interest.
• Green separators
  These have color, are larger and, like the graphics, are surrounded by white space
• Menu items
  These are dark, large and, once again, surrounded by white space.

Javier’s logo carries a little less visual weight for me than the menu items around it, although it’s still very prominent among them. It does carry more weight than the text, but not as much as the menu items in my mind. You may disagree.
The squint test causes the menu items and logo to blend into a single unit. The graphics and separators are still visually prominent, and the text remains visible as large blocks. You can still see everything while squinting, even if you can’t make out what any of it says.
On my screen, only the header and the “El evento” section are visible, giving the page a horizontal direction. However, four sections in total are on the page. When the sections are viewed all at once, the alignment of the green separators gives the composition a vertical direction. And, of course, seeing the whole page at once changes the canvas from horizontal to vertical.
I wonder if the two graphics shown in the screenshot above would have been better on opposite sides. In the top graphic, the camera points right, which is where my eye follows. Better would be to guide the eye to the text.
In the bottom graphic, the woman’s umbrella does point right, but she’s walking left, which is where I then tend to look. Both graphics might work better if their direction led back into the text instead of away from it.

Stanford Arts

The image at the top of Stanford Arts’ home page carries the most visual weight. It’s the largest element on the page and, being an image, has a lot of intrinsic interest. It’s also located at the top of the composition. In truth, it takes up most of my screen.

Note: This website rotates images at the top of the page, and the images that rotate change over time. You probably won’t see this particular image if you visit the website and, because of that, you might assess the visual weights in the design differently than I do here.
I think the triangular images against the angular containers are the next weightiest elements. After that are the large red blocks that make up the header and footer.
When I perform the squint test, all of the elements are visible longer than I’d expect. The elements have a good deal of both light and dark contrast, which helps them stand out.
Eventually, the only things that remain are the images, although in less than full detail. I can make out the large image at the top but only the shapes of the triangular images below.
The design is also interesting for its visual direction. Diagonals dominate, and because most web pages are not dominated by diagonal directions, they capture more attention here. They subvert your expectation.
The particular photograph that I captured in the screenshot above also offers something of a diagonal, albeit a bit curved in parts and created by a moving line of people in others.
Both the woman (in the rightmost triangular image) and the photographer (in the center triangle) have a direction leading to the right. Better might have been to reverse the woman to face inward and move the camera to the left block to points inward, too.
Granted, the images change when you hover over any of the links in the blocks. Still, the images tend to lead outward instead of inward.

Summary

The visual weight of an element is a measure of how much the element attracts the eye of the viewer. A visually heavy element will attract the eye to it.
Visual direction is the perceived direction of forces acting on and exerted by elements. The direction is a cue to the viewer’s eye to move elsewhere.
Many intrinsic characteristics can be modified to make an element visually weightier or lighter. A few can be used to establish an element’s visual direction, as can the canvas itself.
Over the remaining posts in this series, we’ll see how visual weight and visual direction lead to principles like dominance and hierarchy, flow and rhythm and, ultimately, compositional balance.

The Designer Will Make It Pretty

I am sure that my day job as a web developer/designer has a lot of similarities to that of the entire developers/designers community. I craft HTML and CSS using methods that I hope are fluid and adaptive. At the same time, my coworkers and I serve over 100 clients and 13 million users on a single platform.
Each client has the ability to design their website as they see fit, but we have an unbalanced ratio of designers to clients. I do not have the luxury in my day-to-day work of spending months working through a design process as part of a client’s implementation. However, this scenario of limited time hardly strikes me as rare among my design peers.
Because of these constraints, I hear a phrase quite often that many designers would compare to nails on a chalkboard. The people I work with who do not handle the design side of our platform will often tell clients, “The designer will make it look pretty.” Now, “it” could refer to a lot of things: a log-in form, maybe a simple button, or the entire website. When content is raw, unformatted or confusing to the user, it gets sent to the design department so that it can come out the other end “pretty.”

The result of my design process.
Web designers hate this perspective. We consider what we do to be far more important than decorating sloppy content and returning it in a timely fashion. Many of us would argue that our real job is to make content accessible, flexible, easy to use and easy to work with. The real value in design comes from what you can’t see or what you don’t appreciate; it comes from all of the trouble that you don’t have because we fixed it ahead of time. Thank goodness we know better: if we just made things pretty, all of our work would be in vain.

Why Designers Hate “Pretty” Design

Professional designers don’t make things pretty because it’s beneath us. Your visual acceptance of our work is the result of careful decision-making built around grid systems, perfect ratios, color theory, typography and—no, I won’t make your logo bigger—white space. The practice of simply decorating is something we used to do when we were just getting started down this career path. We used to make pretty things in Photoshop to kill time in class or to tinker with a new tool or technique. We have since moved on to bigger and better things.

Image source: Mike Rohde.
Yes, the design community has graduated from the pretty principle to less visual but supposedly more impactful measures. The technology of the present enables us to reach a higher plateau, and we are a bunch of people who refuse to settle for good being good enough, and that includes making something pretty. Right?

Embrace The Pretty

Anyone who feels they have left pretty and supposedly meaningless things behind is wrong. Leaving behind the idea of making your work appealing to the eye is to leave behind real value. Aesthetics are no petty trick for the uninspired. Quite the opposite, really.
Our great human minds come preprogrammed with many incredible default behaviors that automate complex decision processes. One such behavior is to be drawn to attractive things. Of course, this isn’t news. We prefer to spend our lives with companions who we are attracted to, we want pretty spaces to live and work in, and we invest our time and money into these things to make them look good. However, this hidden pattern in our behavior can account for much more than these obvious attraction-driven actions.
Attraction works surprisingly well not just by direct preference but by association, too. Take, for example, something that we see on a daily basis. The process of selling products with attractive models or celebrities may come across as a lazy method of advertising, perhaps by a marketing team that is slacking off. But despite its transparency, this method remains an effective way to pass attributes that we generally associate with attractive people onto a completely unrelated product.
This comes to light in a study performed on two groups of males who were shown the same car advertisement, the only difference being the inclusion of a pretty woman alongside the car. The group that was shown the car with the woman not only rated the car as faster, better designed and more valuable, but when they were confronted about the influence of the attractive woman, nearly all of the subjects denied that it played a role in their judgment of the car.
How does all of this relate to Web design? Like so many things, it comes back to the content. Content is the most important element of a website, and how a user reacts to that content or recalls it later can be heavily influenced by its surrounding. The most obvious example is our judgment of credible information.

In the example above, you can see an article surrounded by distracting advertisements on the right. Crushed into leftover space or given no regard for good typography seems less important or even less factual to us than one that excels in all of these categories—even if the words are exactly the same. To the reader, it is clear that the time spent crafting an article into a beautiful experience indicates that it has higher value and more legitimacy. But the benefits don’t stop at the paragraph level. The entire experience of a website can be enhanced with an eye for beauty. I’ll even show you how.

The Laws of Attraction

The process of booking a place to stay on vacation or a trip has been completely transformed by the Internet. To be completely honest, I’m in my 20s, so I don’t really know what people did to book places to stay before the Internet, but it had to be terrible. Today we have dozens of options for finding deals on hotels, resorts, apartments and beyond. From the variety of choices out there, patterns have emerged in the process of finding places to stay. Every website out there starts with the basics: destination, arrival and departure dates, and guests. This is a good pattern, and it generally serves our best interests, but oh, the difference that design can make.

Airbnb has established an impressive level of popularity in a short time among travelers looking for an experience outside of the standard hotel room. This is in no small part due to the emphasis it has placed on design. When you visit the Airbnb website, its entire mission is revealed to you in an instant. Large vibrant images bleed through the background, showing some hand-picked potential destinations.
These careful selections serve several purposes. First, it becomes immediately clear that we are dealing with something beyond the drab hotel experience. Secondly, it’s no coincidence that the destinations that enter and leave your peripheral vision are so gorgeous. Let’s take a moment to compare this experience to another website that offers a similar set of features.

Vacation Rentals By Owner (VRBO) helps you accomplish a goal similar to that of Airbnb’s users, which is to book destinations with individual owners. Honestly, VRBO does not make this process difficult, and its inclusion here is not meant to imply “Never do this.” The steps are the same (destination, arrival and departure dates, guests, etc.), and its design does not hinder the user from completing this process. However, the difference in experience between the two websites is drastic.
The primary difference is that Airbnb has done a wonderful job of presenting its primary content (the places) beautifully. The large pictures of the very pretty places gets us excited about our trip and about the sort of unique residences we could stay in. Because of the pretty things we immediately see on Airbnb’s home page, our entire experience is enhanced. Even if the process of booking a place to stay is no harder or easier on Airbnb, more people are likely to come back or share this resource with their friends because of the positive and memorable influence of the pretty images and interface. The unique style of Airbnb translates into measurable results in the form of a noticeably lower reliance on search traffic and a higher percentage of direct and repeat traffic.

The Industrial Age Is Over

There was a time when design was a secondary consideration for the products we used and the services we enjoyed. This mostly came about during the Industrial Revolution, and it could be argued that we relived a similar mentality through the Information Age. Both of these eras share a common theme of production on a large and affordable scale. We found ourselves constantly inventing a new mouse trap, except that it didn’t have to be a better mouse trap if it could be a cheaper one. So long as your table, automobile, computer software or thermostat had a utility and was affordable, it was good enough.

If you have the pleasure of living in a developed country, it should be obvious to you that times have changed and this no longer applies. Why did the Nest thermostat make such a huge splash online? Because finally we have a device that can automatically control the temperature in our home? For years we have longed for something that allows us to regulate the temperature where we live! Sorry, but we’ve had these things. In fact, hundreds of these things exist. But that’s precisely why Nest took off: it was the same thing done again but with real design this time.
Sure, it’s important that the Nest makes it easy to program the temperature in your house, which is an element of “good design” in the sense that designers love. The controls are simple, and it’s super-easy to understand, read and use. I would argue, though, that all of this is secondary to the fact that the Nest looks really cool. Perhaps you would scoff at the statement that looking cool is more important than being easy to use. But the fact is that this thermostat will spend most of its life not being touched and not being interacted with in any way. It’s a thermostat, so what will people do with it almost 100% of the time? They’ll look at it.
We see this in industries beyond home décor. It wasn’t long ago that the US automotive industry was in a nose dive for the crapper. This shouldn’t have been much of a surprise because the industry was built on Henry Ford’s principle of mass production on a cheap, repeating, large scale. As the world moved away from affordable necessities to desirable luxuries, the car industry needed to move with it or go broke. In the early 2000s, automotive juggernaut General Motors rehired Robert Lutz, the man who would rewrite the script on how GM made cars. Lutz ditched the industrial mentality of GM and started to imbue his own opinion of cars, saying, “I believe very deeply in the automobile as an art form.” Since then, GM has transitioned from manufacturing cars to designing them.
Looking around, you can see that making things pretty is going from being an afterthought to being an integral part of our lives. We have reached the point where making something affordable yet high in quality is second-nature. Look no further than the content we curate in our social media profiles today to get a prime example of the difference design makes.
The Internet is becoming a culture of hoarding; with Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and websites like Dribbble and 500px, a premium has been put on building a digital collection of things. We share the food we eat, the places we go, the clothes we want to buy and the gadgets we love. Often the primary requirement for sharing these things with our social networks is that they stand out visually. They need to be unique, stylish and well designed… they need to be pretty. As discussed earlier, all of these qualities build a connection between who we are and the products we love. In order to create a product or website of extraordinary value to the millions of digital curators out there, we need to invest in aesthetics that reflect well on those same users.

Put Pretty Into Practice

The landscape of the Web is not so different from that of thermostats or cars. If anything, its resources are over-abundant. Any task you might want to accomplish online either has been done thousands of times or can be easily duplicated after the fact. When users have limitless options and limited time, design is the deciding factor in what makes one experience more worthwhile than another. So, don’t cringe when “pretty” is included as a design requirement, because it should always be. When we make a design pretty, we are deliberately basing our design choices on aesthetic value. A pretty design has a visceral impact on the user and prompts an emotional response.
Designers who ignore the potential impact of prettiness on their work are at risk of being surpassed by peers who share their skill set but who appreciate the role of beauty. Pretty design isn’t just for Dribbble. Your clients, customers and users all stand to gain a lot from that extra coat of paint. A user’s personality can be imbued, however slightly, by the work done by a designer merely by association. I implore you to keep work from leaving your desk until you have had time to make it pretty.

Additional Reading

• A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink
• “In Defense of Eye Candy,” Stephen Anderson

Changing Perspective: A New Look At Old Problems

There is an old story of blind men and an elephant. The blind men all meet and are asked to describe the elephant. One says that an elephant is long and skinny like a snake. The other says that the first doesn’t know what he is talking about and says an elephant is like the trunk of a tree, round and thick. The third says they are both wrong, that an elephant is wide and circular like a giant disc.
In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to “see” the full elephant. When a sighted man walks by and sees the elephant, they also learn they are blind.
It doesn’t take us very long to figure out that each of the men is talking about a different part of the elephant (trunk, leg and ear, respectively). The men are blind, so they fail to take in the whole elephant. Because their experience was limited to a certain part of the elephant, they assumed that the elephant was the part they could see. One could only feel that the elephant was a trunk, so he thought it was like a snake.

Being a creative is often like being a blind person. We are dealing with a problem that we cannot see. We talk about it, we look at it, and then we try to solve it understanding only the parts that we can see. The problem is that we can get in a rut and start seeing the same problem and offering the same solution. What happens, though, when, either by choice or by circumstance, we need to come up with new solutions? What happens when we need to innovate? Innovation by its very nature entails coming up with a new approach to an old problem.
To come up with a new approach to an old problem, we often need to look at the problem differently. If we do the same things, we will get the same results. If we use our same bag of tricks, we will end up with the same magic show. In my experience, when a new solution was required, the best thing I could do (whether I was stuck or not) was to change my perspective on the problem. This could mean looking at new visuals, asking different questions or simply refining my language. Once you have explored new angles of a problem, be they visual, functional or strategic, you will often see something new, which will set you off on the road to creativity and true innovation. When all you see is the ear and leg, you usually just need the trunk to complete your view of the elephant.

A Little Neuropsychology

To answer the question of how a different perspective leads to a creative solution, we need to understand a little neuropsychology and what happens in the brain when you are solving a problem. According to Jonah Leherer in his book Imagine, the “A-ha” moment is essentially an abstract connection that the right brain makes between two disparate ideas. History has countless stories of people having amazingly innovative ideas from seemingly insignificant events. One of my favorites is the story of how Robert Sherman came up with the song “A Spoonful of Sugar” when his son came home from school one day after having his blood taken (they had given him a cube of sugar). Another story is Newton theorizing about gravity after an apple dropped on his head, or Archimedes and the bathtub, and on and on. Some event triggers an idea and the brain makes a connection to creatively solve the problem.
How does this process work? When you are faced with a puzzle, be it visual or functional, you solve it by first running through all of your usual solutions that are obvious — such as the e-commerce layout that you have used a million times, design patterns that you know, the button style that you love, the font that always works, etc. You first engage your left brain by recalling the obvious tried and true solutions. Sometimes these ideas work, sometimes they don’t. As soon as your left brain has exhausted all ideas that don’t work, you get frustrated and you hit the wall. The wall is the inability of your left brain to create new connections from your old ideas. You are unable to connect the old ideas with fresh ones, to find different solutions with the same methods. The only way to get unstuck is to try to see the problem in a new way.
At the point of total frustration, your right brain engages. Your right brain solves problems with images. Once the left brain has gotten out of the way in total frustration, your right brain is able to freely associate in the language that it knows: pictures. Then, it hits — the connection is made, and all of a sudden, like magic, you are off and running, and everything falls into place. What you have just done is create a new connection in your brain, literally.
It usually happens at the most unlikely of times — when a participant in a research session says something that tips you off, or when your spouse shows you something, or when a friend tells you of a frustration and how they solved it. It comes unexpectedly, and two different objects are connected to create something new. Ultimately, most of the research and strategy phase is simply there to create these “A-ha” moments, which we then execute on once we reach the concepting phase.

How To Gain New Perspective

Below are a few of the tricks I have learned to inspire creative thought and to look at problems differently in order to help the brain create connections. While the first few suggestions are mainly for visual design, I find all of these useful for figuring out feature sets and defining scope, and they are completely appropriate for UX and visual designers alike.

Print Out Visuals

Printing a bunch of stuff and throwing it up on a wall is the single best way to see a new solution to your problem. Recognizing patterns is much easier when you are able to see visuals in close proximity than when relying on memory. Print-outs laid out in close proximity help the brain to make connections and generate ideas instead of merely retaining information.
What to print out? Two things in particular help: competitors and inspiration.

For competitors, if you are working on a product detail page for an e-commerce website, pick out 10 to 15 product pages from competitors and print them out on 11 × 17-inch paper, and look for things that work well. Also, observe things that do not work well. Your competitors have done you the good service of trying ideas before you, and you get to test drive their websites and evaluate their ideas without putting in months of development. Group together methods and design ideas that work well for competitors — and note your findings. There will also be a lot of failures to learn from, so note those as well. Seeing what is wrong on other websites could cause you to try something completely new. Seeing the cliches will free you from those tired ideas and allow your brain to run free on different ideas. Even if you are not in “competition” with anybody else, find the nearest verticals and you will make connections faster.
For inspiration, take 10 to 15 pages with various UI elements, print out the pages, cut out the pieces that you want to use, and put them on a board. Record your ideas on sticky notes, After doing this, you will start to see patterns, which you can use to visualize a solution. If you have done this and you are still stuck, put up some other relevant inspiration — be it a vibe, a similar layout or a design pattern — and see what happens. Just keep printing stuff out and rearranging it until you see something. When printing out inspiration, include some things that are totally different from what you saw in competitors to avoid copying what they did.

Refine Your Language

People often describe the same thing using different language. Individuals will get attached to the words they use to describe a problem, and then the group will get stuck on semantics. This is especially true when defining new products and features. We’ll often use a different word or two, and then everything will freeze. It could be the language used to describe user instructions, or it could be the label for a button. It could also be your names for particular objects in your project or particular attributes of those objects. Language is incredibly powerful. As visual designers, we might not be as tuned into it as we need to be, and we’ll shrug it off as the domain of copywriters. But copy and visuals are intertwined so intricately that separating one from the other in Web design is impossible.
So, we need to make sure we’ve got exactly the right language, and we need to experiment. Start by changing the language on the page or refining the instructions. Additionally, you could labels things that did not previously have labels or update existing labels.
If you are working with a copywriter, get them involved in refining any language issues you have with the website. They will be a fabulous source of ideas on language, product terminology and refining instructions.
Language can also block teams. Using different words or phrases for the same thing, especially when working on products that don’t yet exist, can lead to internal confusion. Using different terminology will divide a team rather than unify it. So, having team members define their use of words could help. If you step back and take a deep breath, you might find that you have already solved the problem and just needed to clarify the language in order for everyone to see it.

Ask Different Questions

If you are stuck, it is probably because you need an answer. Trouble is, you might not be asking the right question. If you ask the same question over and over, you will most likely get the same answer. So, how do you rephrase the question or ask a new question to gain new insight?
Sometimes the problem is visual. Something in the layout is distracting or causing it not to work, so you need to address a different part of the layout. The root of the problem might be not the element you are working on but the surrounding elements. Here are a few things to try:

• Delete or remove other items on the art board and see what happens. This could reveal a solution to the problem.
• Try an illustration instead of a photo.
• Change colors.
• Break the grid.
• Emphasize different parts of the page.
• Try a whole new approach to the navigation, not just a new menu bar.

Document Data in a New Way

On a project I was on, we were having trouble pinpointing how to compare feature sets between products. We had several options but kept going around in circles debating on the right direction. Finally, I found a new way to display the comparisons and tried it out as an experiment. Wham! It showed the information in a new way that made sense to the team, and we all got it. So if you are working with data, how can you display or visualize the data in a new way? Could you look at new parameters? Could you reformat your deliverables? Looking at the data in different formats enables you to see new things.

The magical data visualization: overlaying rankings of competitors based on key opportunities.

Analyze Something New

With there being so many techniques and models to display data, exhausting the entire bag of tricks in every project is impossible. If you are looking to see the problem differently, put the problem in a new model: a storyboard, a mental model, a new analytics report, perhaps even changing the format of the data. You will see different things with different models. It will add more detail to the strategy and help you understand the design challenge in the big picture, helping you discover new risks and solutions. Adding data models could also help the business’ decision-makers and team members uncover crucial risks earlier in the process.

Zoom Out to the Next Largest Context

Looking at the big picture can also lead to a new way of seeing the problem. When a problem is very specific, look at how it fits into the next largest context. In product or Web design, this could mean storyboarding how the app or website is to be used, including the location and psychographics of the user and what they are trying to accomplish. Better understanding how the business works might also help. Understanding design in the context of how the app fits into the big picture of the business can help you refine the strategy and eliminate options to arrive at a solution more quickly.
Zooming out sometimes helps me realize that I am asking the wrong question. If you are asking how your problem (say, one about a feature set or product requirements) fits into the big picture, you might find that the big picture is not big enough and has to be expanded (such as by revising the strategy or the user flow). Perhaps the feature set or product requirements don’t make sense because you haven’t zoomed out wide enough and don’t understand the product in context. Once you look at it in the big picture, your entire team might realize that its approach is wrong — or perhaps right!

Final Thoughts

When approaching your next project, try to build in new ways to look at the problem. We’ve explored just a few here. You could also try new project workflows (such as lean or agile) or new tools (such as eye-tracking or usability tests or different software) or new music or whatever.
Going back to our story of the blind men, where is your team blind? Where can you look to make this elephant a little clearer. Design work is very much about feeling your way around and imagining the elephant. By looking at different dimensions (data, competitors, inspiration, language, context), you are able to see a problem more three-dimensionally. No design challenge is so simple that it lacks additional facets for exploration. You might just find the “A-ha” moment you were looking for or discover a major innovation as Newton did or uncover something small that allows you to focus and prioritize your team.
Remember, if you do the same thing, you will usually get the same results. Conversely, if you try new techniques, you may never go back.

How to Be Corporate and Still Be Creative

If you’re like me, you graduated from art school and had dreams of working as an art director at a small agency. You envisioned having your own office on the top floor of a loft with 30-foot ceilings.
Designers would play ping-pong below; people were allowed to drink beer at work; and brilliant ideas would flow effortlessly from your mind into multi-million-dollar campaigns for clients like Nike and Coca-Cola.
In fact, you got a job at a large corporation and were shown to a desk in a sea of light-gray fabric-covered cubicles. Instead of 30-foot ceilings, you have surprisingly low ceilings, covered with a substance that you could swear is asbestos.
You were given a 90-page handbook on how to create drop-shadows and sent off to populate templates for product brochures.
Sounds like hell. But outlined below are a few ways to improve your outlook on work life, foster creativity in you and the business and, most importantly, bring some fun into your corporate job.

Accept the Corporate Mindset, and Then Make Your Mark

Image by Tim Patterson

Working for a large corporation comes with many perks, such as benefits packages, consistent pay checks, team collaboration and not having to chase down new business. But it also comes with communications guidelines, branding standards and templates.
To maintain your creativity, you have to look beyond the projects in queue.
Getting used to the corporate mindset is difficult for some (me included), but embracing it and learning where you can and cannot make concessions is a crucial part of success. For example, I once led an initiative to change the way we marketed a segment of our products.
Instead of simply opening the packaging template and dropping in an image of the new product, I designed a template with a new photography standard, new colorways and a new ad campaign to coincide with the product launch. Of course, I produced what the project originally called for, but I was also able to present another option to the client that included a well-researched, integrated campaign that I had designed from the ground up. Damn, was that ever fun.

Think Like an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs are constantly looking for opportunities in the market to offer something new or make something better.
You can have the same mindset in your corporation. Constantly be on the look-out for ways to improve your company’s products, processes, vendor contracts, print-vendor relationships, color-correction issues, design workflow, online-advertising testing practices, conference-calling ability, whatever.
You’ll see problems and holes in the processes of many of your daily workflows. Instead of complaining about them, you could be the person improving them.

Seek Out Challenges

Few designers want to sit for hours on end putting silos on images because it’s tedious, unchallenging work.
For me, the best projects are the ones that take me a little out of my comfort zone, and I actively seek those out. Not only do they keep me engaged at work but they increase my skill-set and make me more needed to management and the entire team.
I even like to look beyond my team for challenges, and now people come to me for input on all types of projects, from software implementation to video direction to website usability testing.
Scare yourself and you’ll find interesting ways to learn new skills and bolster your creativity.

Become a Free Agent

Want to move to a different team? Let that team’s leader know by offering to help it out!
For months I wanted to move from the print team to multimedia team. Having pretty good knowledge of Flash, I would volunteer for projects whenever they were overloaded.
Eventually, an opportunity to join the team opened up, and because the team leader was already familiar with me and the quality of my work, I was the logical choice for the job. I managed to create the situation I wanted, even though it wasn’t what I was hired for.

Be the Go-To Guy

Know of a huge campaign coming up? I can assure you that the creative director will be overwhelmed.
Mention to him or her that you’d like to help out in any way you can, and show an example of what you can do. As with any client pitch, put yourself in his or her position to figure out where you can help out. You might get the opportunity to work on a high-profile campaign or to travel to help direct a photo shoot.
Become known as a person with a wealth of good ideas, and you’ll get to work on all the fun projects. I’m constantly helping the video team when they get overloaded; consequently, I’m often asked to assist with concepting, art direction, casting, location management, etc. Because I’m not anything close to resembling a filmmaker, I find the challenge rewarding and extremely exciting.

Befriend Clients

Working in a corporate design department affords you constant access to clients. Make friends with them. Not only will it make communication easier during projects, it will also streamline feedback and approval times.
Equally important, friendship is a great way to nurture “brave clients.” Brave clients are people who get in the ring and fight for your great ideas and secure money or backing from management. So, keep the big picture in mind, and realize that when someone asks you to do something slightly outside your job description, he or she may have the key to the budget that would kickstart that pet project of yours mired in red tape.
You’ll get to know some great people who will be willing to go to bat for you in a crunch.

Conclusion

Don’t let preconceived notions hamper your experience of the corporate world. The world may not be exactly what you envisioned, but there are many ways to keep your job fun and interesting. With an open mind, a willingness to execute your ideas and a lot of hard work, you will stay creative, develop skills and advance your career. Who knows? You may even enjoy it.

What about you? What strategies have you tried to improve your job?

5 simple ways to beat designer’s block

Designer’s block is no joke and it always seems to come around when a project’s deadline is quickly approaching.
You just can’t seem to create anything with enough power or spunk—heck, you may just be staring at your screen or sketchbook for hours straight.
It’s truly no fun at all to feel stuck and helpless, especially when your work seems to keep piling up. You feel like you’re stuck in a box, trying to figure a way out. You may try to do something, like step away for a few then come back, but what if that doesn’t work?
Relax and try not to stress. Take a look at these five simple ways you can help yourself remove the block and create some really amazing work before your deadline passes.

1. Listen to music

If you’re anything like me, music helps your creative process and is absolutely essential. Now, I’m part musician, so I understand and break down music a bit differently than those who are not. However, as a creative, music relays to me different emotions and also different colors and shapes and stuff. If I hear a good song, I can create a whole picture or scene based off the one song. If you have ever listened to a song and thought about an ideal music video for it, then you can relate to what I’m saying. Good music creates good images for you.
When you are at a blockage, new music can really open up the images you see and create. Sometimes we get used to stuff and we need new things to broaden our horizons. We all have our favorites and our classics, but listening to the same music can get boring and pretty much render the same images we see in our heads.
As a musician, I like to listen to things outside of my normal genres because certain ones can get a bit repetitive. If you know you dislike other genre’s, try listening to newer music inside your favorite genre or find old music by your favorite artists. Once you find something, listen to it and let your imagination run wild. Hopefully you’ll have a sketchpad so you can jot down the things you see.
This is my personal go-to when I feel a block even coming on. If you want a place to start discovering new music, I recommend Spotify and 22Tracks.

2. Inspiration is NOT a rubric

Creatives can draw artistic inspiration from almost anywhere, but we typically end up perusing the Internet for inspiration when we get stuck. We like to hop online and see what everyone else is doing. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad idea—I mean, how else are we supposed to keep up with what’s modern? The issue is just that after awhile, pretty much everything starts to look and feel the same. If you desire to be a true innovator, you’ve got to see and do things differently.
Perusing through pages of work that is already created is typically helpful, but it seems some designers look at a creative solution and try to attach it on to their own project. For example, if you see a project that uses colored squares and bold text to get the point across, that shouldn’t mean you should do exactly the same. It should, however, signal to you that there is a creative solution in using colored shapes and playing with type weights.
You want to look at inspiration not as a way to design and decorate things, but to understand it as a solution to a problem. This is why I tell folks to frequent inspiration sites that allow you to get a bit of background on the subject. The finished product is nice, but the inspiration is not the design; it’s the solution and the way in which the solution was achieved.

3. Go outside

The answers to your creative block are everywhere, but the greatest place to find solid inspiration is the great outdoors. Mother Nature has put together probably some of the best color schemes and shapes and so much more. Think about what you’re looking for and how it interacts with other elements. The freeness, and depending on your location, the serenity of being outside is just so helpful to the creative process. And Mother Nature doesn’t mind if we borrow a couple of ideas from her.
So, what if you don’t live in a place packed with insects and shrubbery? Man made things are just as interesting. As a matter of fact, I find a lot of people gain inspiration from architecture. Buildings are powerful and are often so consistently themed—they also give you great insight into interaction between different textures as well as interactions between different shapes. Incorporating some of the things you see in the city into your projects can end up being extremely beneficial.
And if you don’t get along with insects or taxi cabs, check out a museum.

4. Forget about it

If your deadline is 24 hours away, then this may not be the best idea, but pushing your project to the back of your mind can really help you come up with some of your greatest ideas. When we think about something too hard we tend to live life around it; we talk about it, we ask questions about it, etc. When you do this, you are forcing something to come out of you that may not be there–this can stress you out and ultimately be unhealthy.
When you’re in a place or situation where you have to deal with the topic, it doesn’t always help. Some of our best ideas are organic and come up through the most casual conversations and actions. I went to school to learn about advertising, and one of my professors would always tell us not to talk about our projects with our partners when conceptualizing. The idea was just to have an organic meeting, click with the individuals and the space and get something out of that.
It sounds absolutely farfetched but some of my greatest ideas came out of just casually talking with someone. Think about it; we react well to things we can relate to, especially when talking about ad campaigns or something that an audience will see. When we force ideas out, they tend to come out just that way–feeling forced and unrelatable. Find a partner, grab a cup of coffee and just talk to someone about something totally unrelated and see what you come up with.

5. The bare minimums

This is a really simple idea that I like to use whether I’m stuck or not because it really helps me create my own style. Whatever your design program of choice, just use the stock plug ins.
We love to look for Photoshop brushes and extra filters, etc., but I think being creative really comes from within and what you are able to create. When we get into the excess things, we start to really rely on them and they become center pieces for our designs. There are some essentials for sure, but using the bare minimums in your design program can really get you to thinking about different techniques and building ideas around them.
Eventually you can create your own textures and vectors and so forth, but having all the excess removed gets you into experimenting with different tools and filters. Perhaps you can find something you like and enjoy and roll with it.

Relaxation is Key

When your projects deadline is coming at you full speed and you have nothing, it’s so easy to tense up and stress out. If you’re feeling designer’s block coming or you feel the stress about to flood in, the answer is simple: just relax.
Designer’s block is totally natural and often bound to happen. Relax, get loose and pick up your sketch book. Figure out something that works for you to get your creative juices flowing and begin to execute.
How do you like to get over your creative block?