Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

What Informs Your Design?

August 3, 2009

Practice of Design

Recently, I read Andy Rutledge’s arti­cle, On Inspi­ra­tion. As I read Andy’s arti­cle, I imme­di­ately thought about Cameron Moll’s idea of inspi­ra­tion vs. influ­ence.

“Influ­ence is imme­di­ate and free for the tak­ing. Because of this, its util­ity is often short-lived. At times it may even serve as lit­tle more than a plat­form for duplication.

“Inspi­ra­tion, on the other hand, is an on-going jour­ney in which one con­tin­u­ally seeks to heighten his or her aware­ness of design in its many shapes and forms. It is an under­stand­ing of the inter­play between design and the cul­tural, social, and eco­nomic facets of society.

“Inspi­ra­tion is not always imme­di­ate, and it has to be earned. Its util­ity is nur­tured and har­vested over time—months, even years—through per­sonal expe­ri­ences. Often it is the cat­a­lyst of true creativity.”

I think Cameron has nailed it. Much of what peo­ple call inspi­ra­tion is really influ­ence. I think there are dif­fer­ent lev­els of influ­ence and how we take that and use it to solve our design prob­lems. Andy devel­ops a sim­i­lar idea in his article.

I think Andy is also on to some­thing. I think he is try­ing to debunk some false ideas about what inspi­ra­tion is. He wrote a sim­i­lar arti­cle about cre­ativ­ity.

I agree with many of Andy’s asser­tions. I think that a lot of peo­ple throw around the term “inspi­ra­tion” and it is cre­at­ing a wrong idea of how a design pro­fes­sional works. It is almost the idea of hav­ing a “muse.” And what most peo­ple call inspi­ra­tion is really influence–looking at design gal­leries. I never find “inspi­ra­tion” or influ­ence when I am look­ing for it.

I think what hap­pens is that we reg­u­larly expose our­selves to dif­fer­ent ideas and works and that becomes part of a reser­voir that we can draw on.

Like other design­ers, I have an itch to jump right into Pho­to­shop or Fire­works and start design­ing. But we really need to take the time to research so that we have solid foun­da­tion to come up with a design solu­tion. As I think about the strate­gic plan­ning process, one of the first steps is doing a sit­u­a­tional analy­sis. That is really research or the result of research. You have to know the back­ground and fac­tors that shape the prob­lem and also look at how oth­ers are solv­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems. This leads to bet­ter defin­ing the prob­lem and the con­straints for com­ing up with an appro­pri­ate solu­tion. Then we can draw upon appro­pri­ate mate­r­ial from our design reservoir.

Now I can think of at least one time that I saw some­thing in a design gallery that helped me right away. But I was already work­ing on the prob­lem and mov­ing in a sim­i­lar direc­tion with my solu­tion. See­ing the other solu­tion gave me some more ideas that helped me shape my final solution.

Andy has an inter­est­ing take on what inspi­ra­tion really is and I need to chew on that a bit more before I know where I agree and where I don’t.

So what is inspi­ra­tion and where does it come from? Well, the antonym of inspi­ra­tion is of course expi­ra­tion. To expire is to end. It is the end of term or end of life. This alone makes it clear that to be inspired is to receive new life; life beyond what we already pos­sess. This new life brings extra­or­di­nary abil­ity, allow­ing us to do things we oth­er­wise sim­ply can­not do. So there is noth­ing mun­dane or worldly about inspi­ra­tion. By def­i­n­i­tion, it is not some­thing we already pos­sess and might will­fully tap into in our moment of need. It is some­thing that comes most often unbid­den and fills us with some­thing beyond “us.” And what is beyond us?

It is not my main pur­pose here to chal­lenge your phi­los­o­phy, but there is an ele­phant in the mid­dle of the room of this exam­i­na­tion: divin­ity. If past response is any indi­ca­tion (and much to my great sad­ness), many of you will surely gnash your teeth and spit in deri­sion of this fact, but the term “divine inspi­ra­tion” is entirely redun­dant. There is no inspi­ra­tion short of the divine. When you con­sider the fact that inspi­ra­tion is some­thing beyond our­selves breathed into us, or that we breathe in (inspire) or oth­er­wise become filled with, and so find the abil­ity to do what we oth­er­wise can­not do, cer­tain real­i­ties stare us full in the face. Unblink­ing. This would seem to make clear how shal­low are our most com­mon ref­er­ences to inspiration.

After read­ing this arti­cle, I am try­ing to decide if I feel com­fort­able using the word inspi­ra­tion at all. Again, I want to chew on this some more. I think I like the words inform or influ­ence bet­ter because I think they do a bet­ter job describ­ing what is really hap­pen­ing in the design process. As I read in Beyond Trend, it is impor­tant as a design pro­fes­sional to be con­scious of what sources are inform­ing our design solutions.

Whether you call it inspi­ra­tion or not, I like Cameron’s idea in that true inspi­ra­tion is a col­lec­tive knowl­edge that we accu­mu­late over time and apply appro­pri­ately to solve our design prob­lems. Then that col­lec­tion informs or influ­ences our design decisions.