Essay

The Creative Wall

When working on design projects that always require high levels of creativity, there are times when designers hit a creative “wall”. This wall is not the same as having a complete creative block. Instead, this is a creative wall that seems to limit or cap further innovation. For example, have you ever felt that you were running out of creativity – where a sense of boredom or lack of excitement about your work surfaced? If so, you are not alone. Many designers hit a creative wall, but the expert designers know how to break through that wall quickly.

Your Creativity Journal

To make sure to not hit such a wall that can plateau your creativity, it is very important to keep a creativity journal. This is not only a place where you can sketch new design ideas. It is also a place where you can think through how your creativity is progressing. On the pages of your creativity journal, you can ask yourself critical questions about your projects, and you can score your innovation and flow states, as well as think through any lessons or takeaways from other projects that can inform future ones. Your creativity journal is a way for you to develop an ever-changing formula for what makes you most innovative. In other words, think of a creativity journal as doing much more than allowing you to develop specific design ideas, because it can additionally help you to hone the way in which you develop those ideas – so they really push for design progress.

In-the-Moment Design

As you work to create a beautiful, functional, and meaningful design that is also uniquely innovative, remember to stay in the moment as you are working. So often, designers are multi-tasking or rushing through design decisions because of looming deadlines. For this, it is wise to practice getting in the flow-state, where you are quickly making design innovation progress while also being very mindful to any design problems or opportunities that may arise. Meditation is a great practice to help you become more aware while designing – to ultimately help you to see opportunities that you could not see before. Your focus can become laser sharp, as you more easily create unique design ideas that push boundaries.

Finding Convergence Points

When not actively designing, there are times when you may arrive at an idea that sparks within you. You may also notice that many great and unique boundary pushing ideas are created by converging multiple variables. For example, you may find a very innovative design idea by converging an aspect of nature with an aspect of how humans experience emotion. At surface level, these do not seem to make any sense together, but when you really stop to think about them as impacting one another – they start to unveil unique design thinking.

In the end, it is important to stay on top of your creative game while striving to design unique multi-sensory design innovations. When you are able to unite these two (creativity and multi-sensory design), you will tap into the heart of what can make your projects most unique, beautiful, functional, and poetically meaningful.

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