3 tips to expand your sources of inspiration

In a digital age, finding inspiration beyond the screen is essential for creativity. Explore three tips for collecting inspiration from everyday life, objects, and diverse sources.

Whether you’re an art director, designer, or artist, you probably already have some kind of inspiration archive. But now that most of us work primarily on the computer, and spend so much of our lives online, it’s easy to fall into the trap of visiting the same blogs or websites than our peers (Pinterest, It’s Nice That, etc.) and we end up sharing the same reference images - making it harder for our creative output to stand out. 



I find creativity is a lot like cooking: you need to fill your inspiration pantry with a really wide range of ingredients in order to produce innovative and flavorsome dishes.

Here are 3 tips to help you source inspiration away from the screen.

1. Record the things that catch your eye in your daily life


It can be hard to break out of going through life in autopilot mode, but there are small hacks you can do to train your brain to pay attention to your environment. For example, you can give yourself small challenges like trying to find a new route to your local train station, or taking a picture every day.

Once you start, you’ll quickly realize that almost anything can be interesting when you look long enough: rows of cans at the supermarket, your niece’s stickman drawing, snippets of conversations overheard in a waiting line…



Use your phone to record everything that catches your eye, no matter how random it seems. Over time, you will start noticing interesting patterns. 





Here is a small selection of things I’ve shot on my iPhone:

These images show my love for bold colours, graphic elements in unexpected places and humorous scenes that are the result of someone else’s mistake or quirk - three ‘ingredients’ that have found their way into my work: 



2. Collect objects that you find inspiring

Put aside the objects that catch your eye in daily life - magazine tears, stamps, fruit stickers, pebbles, tacky postcards... Don’t be afraid to mix high culture and popular culture artefacts, and remember the more varied your collection the better!

Over the past 15 years, I’ve built a big collection of art, design and travel postcards and flyers. Here’s a small sample:

I encourage you to mix and match your references, and to pin a selection above your desk or around your house, so you can get a little boost of inspiration every time you see them.

But remember to mix them up fairly regularly - if they’re up for too long in the same spot, they will start turning into wallpaper.

3. Find inspiration outside your field

Push yourself to find inspiration in mediums different from yours: if you’re an illustrator, which writer moves you? If you’re a filmmaker, is there a fashion designer whose work resonates with you?

Even though I’m a visual creative, one of my favourite artists is singer-songwriter Regina Spektor. I’m endlessly inspired by her playful use of words (comparing her lover to New Year’s Eve in The Party), her uncanny ability to find inspiration in the most unlikely places (imagining an incel’s plea to God in One Man’s Prayer) and the skill with which she can conjure up the most evocative images in her lyrics (she talks about a piano about to be turned into firewood in the song of the same name)

I hope you found these tips helpful! If you’re looking for more ways to unlock your creativity, join me in my Domestika course ‘Art Direction: Generating Memorable Ideas’ to learn playful exercises to produce ideas, and to discover my process to create striking images. As another taster, you can find here the final project brief.

Hope to see you there :)