When you work as a web designer, you get the opportunity to constantly exercise your creativity and come up with fresh ideas and novel designs that will wow your clients. However, just as writers can fall prey to writer’s block, web designers can also struggle with lapses in creativity from time to time, particularly if you’ve had a heavy workload of late and you’re starting to feel a little jaded.
Which brings us neatly on to that very sombre question that weighs on many a web designer’s mind: how do you keep coming up with fresh ideas that will help you keep up with your competition – or, better yet, stand out from the crowd?
If you don’t have any answers ready to hand, don’t stress. Below, you’ll find some top tips that should help you solve this particularly thorny web design issue!
1. Jazz Up Your Home Office For A More Inspiring Ambience
At the end of the day, if you’re working as a freelance web designer, creativity starts at home. If the environment in which you’re working every day – most likely your home office? – isn’t in a great state to nurture your creative juices, then you’ll probably find yourself more likely to stagnate and suffer from those dreaded creativity blocks.
So, how do you spruce up your workspace to make it more inspiring?
Arguably, the best place to start is by clearing up any clutter you have lying around. It’s going to be hard to focus on your latest design briefs when your thoughts keep turning to that pile of documents stacked untidily on the edge of the desk, or those unwashed coffee cups leaving rings on the windowsill! Of course, you don’t have to go totally Marie Kondo, but making sure you have a well-ordered workspace can have a surprising effect on your ability to create new ideas.
It will also probably be helpful to declutter your work laptop too. Your portfolio probably takes up a certain amount of space on your hard drive, not to mention all of the invoices, orders, tax returns, and other documents that you need to manage as a freelance worker.
Making sure your files are all clearly named and catalogued will help to create a tidy virtual workspace. When it comes to ensuring you have enough storage, you can also make the most of helpful online tools, such as the PDF compressor provided by Smallpdf. This handy service will compress PDF files to your specification and can shrink bulky PDFs by up to 99%, leaving you with plenty of newfound room to spare on your hard drive.
Finally, another good way to make your home office more inspiring is to decorate it with artwork, ornaments, and imagery that you find particularly beautiful, enthralling, or unique. Being surrounded by those objects and pictures should help to stimulate your creative juices and get those income-boosting ideas flowing.
2. Find Out What The Big Brands Are Doing Right
One of the easiest ways to replenish your creative juices is to think about some of the brands that you love the most, and that you buy most often in your personal life. It doesn’t matter if it’s a beauty brand, a food manufacturer, or a fashion house – there is something about that particular brand’s image that has made it stand out for you on the shelves time and time again, and prompted you to choose their products above all of their competition.
Take some time to really consider the reasons for your choices and you will begin to comprehend the simple genius behind the tactics and designs your best-loved brands employed to win your loyalty.
For example, maybe their choice of colours had something to do with the allure of their product packaging, or perhaps there was an especially striking image that they used which struck a chord with you. People tend to respond to brands that project an image that they either currently identify with or aspire to in the near future.
Using this newfound knowledge, you may just find that you start to find it easier to come up with ideas for your next clients.
3. Look To The Music World
If you spend even a couple of minutes thinking about the music industry, you will realise that image plays a very important role in promoting artists and helping people develop an interest in a particular band or singer.
After all, just think about the iconic outfits, makeup and platform boots worn by KISS in the 80’s, or the globally recognised image of the Rolling Stone’s open mouth with its tongue sticking out. When you spend some time pondering the different stylised representations of artists spanning a wide range of musical genres – from rap to hard rock to 21st-century pop – you will soon realise how imagery helps artists build up their identity and cement themselves in the minds of their target audiences.
Spending some time immersing yourself in the colourful and very diverse iconography of the music industry may just help to give a massive boost of inspiration and creativity – especially if you pair your research with a soundtrack of your favourite songs!
4. Get A Feel For Your Clients
Speaking of clients, the next tip for generating some juicy inspo is to take your clients’ individual tastes into account. After all, it will be so much easier to come up with the perfect web design ideas if you have a nuanced understanding of what motivates and enthrals your clients above all else.
But how do you get such personal insights into the people you’ve been hired to work for? Don’t worry, we’re not advocating becoming their stalker! But it will probably help if you sit down with them and have an in-depth conversation that covers some of their essential likes and dislikes, including their favourite stores, brands, colours and iconic imagery – as well as all of the ones they’re not keen on.
You could even do a little ‘field work’ and head out to visit some of the stores and locations they love the most, in search of inspiration. You never know what ideas may start flowing when you start to immerse yourself in your client’s world.
5. Take Inspiration From Nature’s Splendour
If you have clients that specialise in nature-based or eco-friendly products, then the best words of wisdom you can receive are to turn to the natural world to get some fresh ideas. Nature is filled with mind-blowing patterns, images, and colours, from the shockingly vivid hues and bold patterns of the wattle-cup caterpillar to the bright acid yellows and oranges of poison dart frogs, and the surreal beauty of the aptly named peacock mantis shrimp.
If you look hard enough, nature can provide an endless source of inspiration for designers of all kinds; in fact, for centuries now, we’ve been drawing on the natural world for inspiration for everything from paint colours to textile designs and that trend shows no signs of stopping!
Overview
When you work as a web designer, there will probably be many times when you find yourself bursting with ideas and inspiration. However, there will also be fallow periods where you struggle to keep up with the sometimes-exhausting demand for constant creativity. After all, the mind gets tired and burnt out, just like our muscles and joints, so it’s not surprising if you struggle from time to time.
During these difficult periods, it will help to have plenty of different sources of potential inspiration all around you, such as those mentioned above. Whether it’s images of your favourite music artists, pictures of natural wonders, or simply a perfectly tidy home office decorated with eye-catching artworks, there are a number of things you can do to get those creative juices flowing again!
