designer vs. teflon

When the #%*@ just won’t stick and your deadline is fast approaching, being a designer is not fun. It’s a problem every designer has faced, many times. And if you’re looking for inspiration, everyone and their uncle is ready to tell you how to find it. Even me.

But, when it comes down to it, when it’s just you and a blank, flourine-polymer, Photoshop canvas, what does any of this really mean? It’s your hump and you have to figure out how to get over it.

nothing sticks to teflon

I can tell you to start with the basics, the things you know have to be there, like functionality, content and so forth. Create a grid. Map out these elements. And once you have done that, I can tell you to refer to past work. What has worked before, to solve a similar problem? I can tell you all this and it may even help, but when you come up on that hump, you may have only managed to push it off, as apposed to climb on top of it.

There is a simple trick I have found to work quite well for getting over the creative hump. It is simply to duck out. Duck out and do something fun. It doesn’t have to be a long endeavor. It only needs to be long enough for you to actually enjoy what you are doing at the moment.

To the layman, this might appear to be procrastination. But a good designer knows, this is actually a carefully crafted plan, to forget that they are a designer at all. You might laugh, but I honestly believe that this is one of the things that separates the feathers from the fluff, in this industry.

So in keeping with that spirit, here are a few blinks, from positive exploits.