I am creative, I write things, I design things, and I code things. It’s what makes me happy and I enjoy doing it – even if I do look at other people creating and think about how they are so much better than me! But when I’m embarking on projects, I hit a wall, more often than I like to admit to myself, a creative wall. A block where I am unable to continue. There are no ideas and my brain no longer wants to brain. I am sure many others reading this are also in the same boat.
It really annoyed me, to begin with, I assumed as a creative person you were always creative. It was something you didn’t switch off, but like most other creative things, the more you force it the less it works. I tried so many different ways to try and overcome the creative block. I would look at other people’s work, and head to website portfolios such as Behance, or siteinspire. But no joy. I would still be no further forward in my creative endeavours.
I needed a new way to get creative inspiration.
I hoped by staring at a blank canvas, or other people’s successful work, I would miraculously come up with that brand new idea. The spark would suddenly appear and I’d be away coming up with my next groundbreaking, internet-destroying, mega project.
Alas, it did not work.
Then, one day, I was browsing the internet looking for this vital spark to kick-start productivity when I saw a blog post. It spoke about how you can use birds to come up with your design project’s next colour scheme. Jesus, that’s a great idea, I thought. It’s amazing when you are in your own little world how you forget about everything around you.
So I started looking at the birds in my garden, at the local park, and on my journeys into where I worked. I started to see some amazing colour variations and some really smartly camouflaged birds. All mixing a variety of bright colours, such as the Mandarin Duck, which boasts a mix of interesting colours to attract a female, or the Treecreeper, coloured to disguise itself against the tree branches.
Suddenly, my creative block was disappearing. I was looking at the birds fluttering around and thinking about how they were designed.
But there’s more than birds that you can use…
Birds are but one element of a smorgasbord of natural creativity you can use to break down those mental blocks. For me, looking at the colour of birds was just the gateway drug, an entry point, for a wider world of different things. Because when you look around, the world is built around the idea of being the best version of itself – flowers are designed to attract animals to spread pollen, leaves are all designed to capture the sun, all to sustain life.
And if you look close enough, there are tiny intricacies that make the natural world, for me, the best creative mood board out there.
A leaf, simple in nature, but intricate in design. The above picture, a macro image of a leaf, shows how the whole thing connects and the variety of colours in just one thing. Although simple when you aren’t spending time to admire it, the closer you get the more you find out. This goes for all forms of nature. A snail shell, once inspected up close is more than just a circle, a spiders web is a connection of hundreds of tiny threads.
Even as you step back and look at the larger things, you come across interesting design quirks. Why does an ant-eater have a long snout? Why do elephants and giraffes live on the same continent but have very different looks? How can you adapt the evolutionary traits of the world and put that into your design?
When you start thinking about it this way, I find that meeting the requirements of my customers is so much easier. Because it breaks down their requirements into the fundamentals. What environment are you looking at? Are you a giraffe in a bunch of elephants? How will you attract a mate? What are your intricate or interesting features?
Sustainability isn’t just recycling to give us a place to live
This brings to a nice wrap-up and a word about sustainability, as designers we are sometimes too quick to design something that is just thrown away when it’s used. We create waste when we redesign, follow trends, or create designs which can too quickly become obsolete.
Nature helps us by enabling a creative outlet, a source of inspiration, and it’s somewhere quiet we can go to think things over. We have a duty to work with our clients, to create designs that are sustainable, forgiving to nature, and most importantly, doesn’t ruin the landscape when thrown away.
I hope this post has given food for thought, on the importance of nature and how we can use it to build our next project but also as something we can include in design considerations in the future.