Much is made of the need for inspiration in design work. While most of a designer’s job is sweating the details, we all still need that little spark to get us going. We need that one initial idea or concept to get us started on the path to design greatness.
And so we binge. We read articles that show off cool things other people have designed, watch videos of new and innovative products being unveiled, and generally seek that spark. The only problem with this process is that in our haste to be inspired, our good ideas can sometimes be obscured by everything else that’s already in our brains.
Unless things have gone very wrong, our thoughts generally don’t happen in a vacuum. Our minds are filled to the brim with our daily tasks, our relationships, and most importantly in this article, everything we already know about design. It’s like eating foods of drastically different flavors, one after the other: the flavor of the first dish will affect the flavor of the second. Jumping from one design project to the next will affect how the second one plays out.
People who eat for fun and profit use palate cleansers to help them more easily distinguish between flavors. We can use this same principle in the world of design to clear our heads a bit, and allow new ideas to fully reveal themselves.
