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Having sources of inspiration at hand can help the designer achieve creative flow. Nature exploration is a technique for observing patterns in systemic and formal design.
This is done by simply observing nature. You look around, see something interesting, go up for a closer look, and begin to notice all these beautiful patterns and designs that are going to inspire you.
Nature is a really great designer, and although it sounds too simple and untechnical, it can provide you with a source of inspiration for color, texture, pattern, and much more to aid you in a design.
Another technique for inspiration is called chance operation. Chance operation is a system by which one adheres to set conditions, allowing chance to factor into decisions.
Chance operation allows the designer to lose control of his or her design and experiment with unpredictable results.
The definition sounds a bit technical, but really it's just about leaving a design up to chance initially, and then making decisions based on the result.
IN CONTEXT
Imagine you're making an abstract geometric piece. You have all these colored pieces that you want to use, but you're not really sure where to start on that design. Why not leave it up to chance to find inspiration?
So you grab all the pieces and throw them in the air, and they land on your canvas. That's a really great start; from there, you can go on tightening up the design.
Maybe there's too much blue in one area, or there's too much orange, or you want bigger pieces grouped together in other areas, and so on and so forth.
The artist Jackson Pollock is said to have used this method a lot. He would initially leave it to chance to dictate where the paint would fall on the canvas, and then he would evolve and build a piece from there.
Yet another form of inspiration is to remix, which is taking a finished work and adding to or subtracting from it.
The motivation is to create something new and unrecognizable from the original work.
IN CONTEXT
Someone makes a cool chalk design on the street, and you happen to walk past it.
You really like the design, and it inspires you to do something creative with it in your own way.
So you get your own chalk, and you expand upon the design until you end up with something you like.
An homage is a piece of work made to pay tribute to the style of another artist or designer.
Take the very iconic style from Andy Warhol below.
This may inspire you to create a piece similar to it, and by doing so, you create a piece that's an homage to Andy Warhol's work.
Homage is a way of using your own work to pay tribute to the work of an artist you admire.
Source: THIS WORK IS ADAPTED FROM SOPHIA AUTHOR MARIO E. HERNANDEZ
