Design inspiration comes from all around us: nature, music, personal and public events, and the lives around us. Everyone of us takes our design experience and builds it from the multitude of different places we gain inspiration from.

A connection of life on screens

It always seems to me that I can be sitting in various places and just envisioning things by looking around. As it is at this very moment I’m typing this, the sun is setting behind a few trees, causing a minor glare on my screen. It seems as if as the sun fades away, the upcoming winter fades into view – yet, all I can think about is months and two seasons from now when it will be June.

When you think about, design is nothing more than what we each envision, and many times, it’s our own lives and personal characteristics spilled onto a digital canvas. Those of us that like simplicity and a clean, organized, order to life will output the same in site and graphic design.

True tendencies tend to show up, like someone having disorganized and messy code probably can say and see the same about their workspace.

Habits

Habits come out on graphics and in code. Once you do something one way and you have success at it, you tend to continue doing into the same way into you run into a problem.

For me, this includes starting every design with a few photoshop mocks, then going right into code. Before, I would spend countless amount of time in photoshop trying to perfect the ultimate layout before even trying the code, because coding intimidated me. Now? Exactly the opposite. I spend little time in photoshop, and head right into code a lot sooner, because I know I can continue to work things out and make changes without having to represent it graphically.

Will it ever change? I’m not sure. Since I made my own changeover from being a photoshop dominated designer to dealing mostly with the code itself, I learned more about coding than I had ever known, and I quickly improved my coding time, therefore I’ve eliminated the use for photoshop as often as I had previously used it.

Habits mold a designer a lot, because one they settle in, they seem to stay that way.

Pulling elements from nature

If you’ve ever seen any of my designs besides Devlounge, especially most of the Astereo designs over the past year, you probably noticed a recurring theme in all of them, being ocean and a “summer-like” lifestyle.

Even though my location gives me only three truly warm months (June-August), I tend to convey a summery feeling in most of my designs, even if it’s the middle of January. With the summer being my favorite season, for reasons from being out of school to just having the ability to get out every day and enjoy life, I seem to be unable from stopping myself from including some kind of warm weather element in personal design.

Nature can do a lot more than inspire graphics themselves. By simply looking at things around you, you can pull inspiration for layouts of sites, natural color schemes, and much more. Looking outside is a good place to start if you’re lacking inspiration.

Music and sounds

I myself seem to be able to pull plenty of inspiration out of music. I could probably count the amount of times I haven’t had music playing while sketching, design, and coding all on one hand. For me, it’s just a must. This is because, no matter what kind of music you may like, their always seems to be songs that can match your mood or situation you happen to be in. It’s like music is the connector between life moods & events and design. By simply hearing thoughts expressed in sound, you can turn it into a piece of digital or canvas art.

Inspiration built from the ground up

So, where does all this leave you? It leaves you back at square one – you. If you’re struggling to create something new and unique, try focusing on yourself more and what everyone else says is good design. Inspiration is built individual, based on many factors, because everyone sees inspiration in something else. Sit back, play some music, and take a good look around, and find something to get your creativity going again.