Design your way

Great graphic design has its easy day and its hard days. It can be hard to find inspiration for your graphic design ideas.

You can get creative block or just find your current design lackluster.

The busyness of your everyday life can be overwhelming. There’s dozens of reason why graphic design project ideas can stagnate. It happens to everyone.

What you need to do is figure out how to kick your brain into gear. Here’s some ideas for graphic design inspiration to get your ideas flowing.

Time Your Work Well

A lot of people find that late morning is the best time to get creative work done. After lunch, people tend to be sleepier and less productive, making morning a much better time to work. The first day of the work week isn’t very productive either, though you can use Monday mornings to throw ideas in catch-up sessions.

This are general guidelines about productive times to work, and there are a lot of people out there who find afternoons more productive and Mondays to be the day that’s the best to get things done. It all depends on you. The key is to pick a time to do work that works best for you.

Look To New Things for Graphic Design Ideas

While graphic designs trends can be helpful in figuring out what direction you need to go, you can also find inspiration in things outside of design trends.  Relying solely on current design trends can result in designs that are unoriginal and highly derivative. Those designs can also become dated very quickly.

Look for other sources for inspiration, from the great outdoors to the forms you see around you to your children’s drawings. Anything can give you good new graphic design ideas.

Tell Your Team Everything They Need

Everyone involved in the project should know everything that in the design brief. Be very transparent and don’t hold anything back. Let your team know it all, even things that don’t seem important.

Just make sure they know that it is secondary information. Full disclosure of the details of the project creates a sense of trust and also can open up the floor for new ideas from everyone. Sometimes an off-hand comment on something can give you a new graphic design idea.

Ask Questions about the Brief

Part of coming up with new ideas is analyses.  Ask questions of every element of your design brief. This may seem to add time to your design process, but it can be an important element to polishing the design brief or giving your chance to bring some new life to it.

Some example questions: does this completely answer the brief? Is this a good solution? Are we being objective? Take the time to see your own subjective biases in the brief and do some serious analyses of your final design brief.

Sit Around a Real Table

A proper table can make a big difference to the productivity of a creative graphic design team. Don’t have everyone sit around a coffee table. While it might be fashionable to hotdesk and sit in easy chairs, it’s not really helpful to getting things done for your graphic design idea.

Scattering your team like you’re working out of a living room is not a good idea. Conversation gets broken up and ideas become fractured between sections of the team. A real table meeting brings everyone closer together, allowing for graphic design ideas to flow freely between them.

Encourage Design with Physical Creative Elements

While clutter-free, minimalist graphic design studios are in fashion in modern graphic design, try including items like paint, brushes, paperboards, and scalpels. Give your team something that they can use with their hands as they work through graphic design ideas. Offer your team different textured papers and other similar elements for them to see what they are actually like.

Different colored paints can call to mind what colors look like when not on a computer screen. Having graphic design become something solely generated by a computer can make the process seem unreal and disconnected from the physical world. Offering these physical design tools helps everyone remember that graphic design is a physical experience.

Be Honest With Your Team

Let people know what you really do think of their suggestions. If someone is very much behind an idea and they know no one else is, this atmosphere of honesty is going to make sure it is really a good ideas before bringing it to the table.

Communication should always be polite and professional. A lot of how people will take you letting them know a graphic design idea is not optimal will come down to how you communicate with them.

Use Word Games to Stimulate Creativity

Use what are often called ‘essence words’ to generate a list of ideas. These words should summarize the personality, spirit, and message you’re trying to communicate with your graphic design idea. Some of these words might seem crazy.

Temperature words like ‘cold’ or ‘warm’, for instance, might be a good fit for what you’re trying to convey, but they might also seem strange for a list of words about graphic design. Put them down on your list of essence words anyway. In a day or two you might find that they resonate with your graphic design ideas.

Take a Break

Sometimes, the best thing to do is step back from your graphic design project and let everything sink in.  If you have the time, share ideas, then give yourself and your team a few days to sleep on them. This gives everyone a chance to turn the ideas over in their heads and properly evaluate them.

The following brainstorming session is usually much more productive. There is also often more visual material to work with, allowing for better communication of the graphic design ideas.

What Are Some Current Graphic Design Trends to Look At?

While trends come and go, knowing what’s hot can be a big help in finding inspiration for your graphic design project ideas. Here’s a list of some of the most recent graphic design trends.

80s Inspired Graphic Design

Retro graphic design has been a staple of the past decade. This graphic design trend taps into nostalgia, often blending with recent technological advances for a really amazing look.

The bold and lively color palette of the 80s has seen a recent rebirth. Neon colors and dark colors are both optimistic and boldly in your face. The 80s was a boom decade, a period of arcades and sci-fi movies that look retro and wildly imaginative now. There’s a childhood comfort and futuristic optimism to these 80s inspired graphic design ideas.

Arts and Craft Styled Patterns

The sleek, flat designs of the past decade are about to give away to more individualized design. Consumers are getting tired of the simplified layouts that have saturated the market in the past few years.

Include patterns, prints, and an overall arts and crafts inspired feel. Combing these elements with flat design can create products that are both vibrant and ultra-contemporary. Expect to see nature-inspired patterns like plant patterns and marbled patterns. Use painterly patterns next to simple text in printed media for a great look.

Bold Colors

Light and neutral colors like gray and black are giving way to more bold bright colors. Pantone has declared this year the year of Greenery, so you can expect to see that color show up in many graphic design portfolio ideas.

To make the best of this change, use colors found in nature and crank up their intensity. Use these bright colors against traditional neutral backgrounds to give your graphic design ideas a fresh new look that doesn’t deviate too far from tradition, especially if you’re working with an established and successful brand.

Color Transitions

Multi-colored transitions of color in the register is becoming increasingly common, even in small graphic design elements like logos and buttons. Color transitions are much more visually interesting and eye-catching than flat colors.

A lot of major companies and brands have started adopting the use of color transitions for just about everything, so expect to see a lot of it in both print design and web design.

Asymmetric Layouts

As a part of the pushback against minimalist layouts, asymmetry had begun to feature prominently. More often than not, graphic designer break the rules of symmetry to create deliberately unbalanced designs. If you were to draw a lien between the two halves, they would not look the same, which has been common or a very long time in graphic design ideas.

These graphic designs are fascinating to look at and have lively aspect to them, especially in combination with interesting patterns and vibrant colors.

Duotone Composition

These designs consist of two bright colors. They are very noticeable, and pulling them well off can require quite a bit of skill.  The end result can be absolutely amazing. You can use any two colors you like for a good look, but for an even more striking effect, use two contrasting colors.

Low-Poly Designs

Inspired by graphic design in video games, this graphic design trend has now found its way into all fields of graphic design. You’ll find it more and more on ads, banners, business cards, flyers, and even clothing. It’s a very cutting edge for of graphic design, since it uses geometric shapes and colors to create the look and feel of a 3D design.

What Are Some Good Graphic Design Portfolio Ideas?

When it comes to your graphic design portfolio, make sure there is a lot of diversity in the ideas you present. Only show off your best work, especially the designs that have been a big success.

Make sure the images are clear, high resolution, and are presented so they look their best. Black background usually work better for mage galleries, since they help the colors of the images stand out better, but you should experiment to make sure.

Ending thoughts on graphic design ideas

It’s far too easy to let yourself fall into a graphic design rut when you’re having a hard time and inspiration dries up. Try our ideas and inspirations to help you get back into your graphic design groove.

If you liked this article about graphic design ideas, you should check out these articles as well:

• Graphic Design Courses: Learn Graphic Design Online
• Graphic Design Definition: What It Is And What Does A Graphic Designer Do
• Face Cards: The Intricate Playing Card Designs

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