More Design Tips

• • Draw People into Your Story with the Rule of Three
• • Three Steps to Great Design
• • Overcoming Obstacles in Design
• • Try Word Lists for Advertising “Gold”
• • Building the Perfect Letterhead
• • Concept Catalog: Show Your Best Work
• • Attract Magazine Readers with Short-Form Columns
• • Essential Dos and Don’ts for Adding Beauty to Your Page
• • How Geometry Inspires Design
• • Use Color Contrast to Trick the Brain
• • Design that Pops
• • How to Lure in Your Audience with Good Design
• • Boost Your Marketing Prowess with Perfect Postcard Design
• • 5 Ideas to Spark Those Creative Juices
• • 5 Ways to Toot Your Own Horn
• • A Metaphorical Idea
• • 5 Must-Haves in Every Layout
• • Trim the Fat: What Your Logo Doesn't Need
• • Timeboxing: An Outline for More Efficient Design
• • Paragraph Indicators - Make A Dent in Your Universe
• • Designing for Color-Blind Viewers
• • Add Sparkle With the Symbolism Tool
• • Grab Them Right Out of the Gate
• • Depicting Time and Motion with Design
• • Design That's Easy as A-B-C

5 Ideas to Spark Those Creative Juices

Jump-start your creativity and get inspired! Inspiration can come from exploring new places, disconnecting from electronic distractions, and even taking the time to look at familiar objects in a whole new way. Try one or more of these ideas to jump-start your imagination and get the ideas flowing:

1) Make time to be creative. Whether you attend a formal class, love to doodle, work in a visual creativity diary or just pin things to a mood board for inspiration, taking the time to nurture your creativity can help build your skills and open pathways for new inspiration.

2) Step away from your tribe. Step outside your comfort zone or the areas and people you're most familiar with for a whole new way of looking at things. You'll have fun and expand your horizons, giving you fresh insight and invigorating your approach to design.

3) Make a timeline. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Break that giant task you've been avoiding down into simple, single steps that can help you get moving, creating a timeline of sorts. Once you have a clear, actionable list, you'll be able to work the steps into your schedule and begin chipping away at that monster of a task.

4) Deliberately Disconnect. Make at least part of your day free from screen time and digital distractions. These devices could be using up more time and energy than you think. Spend at least part of the day disconnected and watch your creativity soar.

5) Experiment with new uses for familiar things. You see a cardboard box as trash, but a child sees it as a castle or rocket ship. Choose a few familiar objects and come up with a list of new ways they could be used. Thinking of familiar items in fresh new ways flips your perspective and gets your imagination working again, no matter how far away you are from your box-loving childhood years.

Still stuck? Simply give us a call and let's work together to get those creative juices flowing and create your next masterpiece.

The Creativity Challenge

by Tanner Christensen

Discover your "Aha" moment--right now!

What's the best way to become more creative? Just change how you think! This book challenges you to go against your default ways of thinking in order to write, design, and build something extraordinary. Featuring more than 100 challenges, exercises, and prompts, each page guides you as you push past the way you normally see the world and uncover all-new possibilities and ideas. The Creativity Challenge teaches you that you already have immense creative potential in you--you just need to tap into it.

Whether you're feeling stumped or uninspired, these creativity prompts will help you ditch typical thinking patterns and finally unleash the possibilities hidden within your mind.