7 Tools to Spark Your Inner Creativity

Get some guidance from creativity experts

Designers, illustrators, and advertising specialists advise on how to overcome creative block and fear of the blank page and help you find your style in your creative endeavors.

Go fishing for ideas

Objects that draw your attention, phrases that make an impression on you, as well as persistent thoughts are all examples of creative ideas you must learn to recognize and catch. Alejandra Lunik (@alejandralunik), a graphic humorist and illustrator who teaches the Domestika course From Idea to Vignette Step by Step, is an expert in turning every day into an infinite source of inspiration.

The artist recommends observing your surroundings and to take notes, opening your eyes, and capturing everything that draws your attention. Something good will spring up from this exercise. Learn, however, to let go of a bad idea and remember that the route towards a mistake can be the same or longer than the path to the right decision.

Photodrawing

As the name suggests, this tip shared by Ji Lee (@jilee), creative director at Facebook and Instagram, consists of drawing on top of photographs that you take during your observations of the mundane.

This technique allows you to notice that inspiration is always near. You need to recognize it with your own eyes and find patterns of your style that can guide you in the development of all your projects. Don’t miss his course Transforming Your Creative Ideas into Personal Projects, to learn more about this.

Collect reference material

Mike Sandoval (@mike_sandoval_), who teaches the course Illustration: From Idea to Concept, is an illustrator, graphic designer, and visual artist.

When developing his projects, he finds it useful to go through the material that made an impact on his life: books, films, magazines, etc. His recommendation to all creative people is to keep such a collection. It becomes an additional option when looking for reference material on the internet, which is less personal as it available to all artists everywhere in the world. It strengthens your identity and style.

Dry spell antidote

Vals (@vals421), who teaches the course Digital Illustration: Use your Imagination to Create, believes that daily life and dreams are a good reference point to start creative projects.

Some creatives choose to refer to models that they like. To get something 100% original, instead, you should make a list of things that happen to you during the day and mix them with memories from your dream activity: something that you see, that you hear, that makes you laugh or stirs your emotion.

Finally, you should combine all the words in this list but disconnected from these experiences. Slowly, this list of words that seem random to start with will begin to mean something to you, and that’s where you’ll be able to find the creative idea you were looking for and could not put down.

Personal exploration

For Trini Guzmán (@holaleon), the artist teaching the course Creative Embroidery: The Stitch Revolution, exploration is a liberating resource: it helps you to get rid of the fear of making mistakes and investing your time in something that is ‘wrong.’

It’s about researching our creative process and our essence. We need to make an effort to know ourselves and opening up space in ourselves where our unique style gestures appear.

Oblique Strategies

Mind mapping is useful when trying to overcome the creative block. There are endless ways to go about it.

Daniel Granatta (@granatta), the anthropologist, consultant, and publicist, who teaches the course Advertising Creativity for All Audiences, recommends one of his favorites: Oblique Strategies. It is a card game method created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt that encourages you to consider alternative viewpoints for solving your problems, forcing you to let your imagination fly.

Reverse Brainstorming

Sometimes the problems we want to solve are countless, and we are limited in our ability to overcome them. Reverse brainstorming is an activity that allows you to deconstruct a problem into many small issues, thus simplifying each challenge.

Daniel Granatta suggests tackling creative processes upwards: from the particular to the general. Finding answers to small questions is more straightforward and more feasible.

You may also like:

- Books to Inspire Your Personal Projects
- Domestika Creatives: Shinji Nagabe
- Sketchbook Tutorial: Why and How to Create a Sketch Thumbnail