Last week Tara and I shared our inspiration boards with you and how we reveal them along the way on our projects, way before they are complete. Lots of designers and creators want you to pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, but we like being transparent about what influences us. And what influences us could be anything from other design trends to interiors to fashion to photography. So that opens up another conversation about inspiration-gathering. Though we’ve spent years and years honing our craft, our creative process doesn’t exist in a vacuum and we are inspired by outside trends. But when does inspiration cross the line into imitation and how do you avoid it?
We have worked with a lot of students and new designers who have a hard time finding the balance between inspiration, imitation, and their level of taste vs. their skills. Here is our advice to them. But mind you, if you’ve been working for years as an inhouse creative where you have to go out and hunt and kill your own inspiration, or even in an agency where perhaps imitation is a big no-no and a constant worry – these tips might help as well:
1. What do you like?
From color combinations your obsessed with to artists and authors you admire - it’s important to identify what you like. (We think Pinterest is a great tool for gathering these things.)
2. Why do you like them?
Once you figure out what you like determine why. Find common threads and uncover patterns. Stare at a composition of a beautifully designed room or a badass layout design and break it down into it’s elements. Identify the colors, textures, scale, grid and typography and then mentally piece them back together to see how the whole piece was created.
3. Practice by imitating.
We think it’s okay to imitate. I spent a good amount of my time in design school pretending like I was David Carson and Art Chantry. Should you post these pieces in your online portfolio? Probably not. But emulation can be a great way to hone your craft.
4. Find inspiration elsewhere.
When you limit your sources of inspiration you run the risk of becoming a copy cat. You will start to find your style when you diversify your influences. And don’t limit your sources of inspiration to within your industry either.
5. Mind the Gap
Ira Glass, public radio host of This American Life, has this great quote on the creative process for beginners:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you...”
And that takes us right to the 10,000 hour rule.
6. Practice for 10,000 hours.
I recently read Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers and had a major “a-ha” moment when he said it takes 10,000 hours to become successful at any given task. A big part of becoming a master at your craft and creating your own style is to practice. If you don’t quit before 10,000 hours you’ll start feeling more comfortable with your craft.
Here are a few other really great reads about inspiration and imitation:
• Jessica Hische has a very articulate post on inspiration vs. imitation - a must read for every student and designer (new and old) out there.
• Becka Robinson at Life As An Artispreneur prefers to shut herself off from outside influences to avoid the risk of unintentional imitation.
• Erin Loechner talks about the fine line between imitation and inspiration on Decor8.
What are your thoughts on inspiration and imitation? Any advice for young designers or students?
Earlier this week we talked about using Pinterest as a niche social media marketing platform - but today I want to show you how we use Pinterest as a tool for capturing inspiration. Tara and I are very methodical. A very specific part of our method is capturing inspiration and sharing it with the people we are working with – way before we get to the “end” of our branding recommend. So we use Pinterest to collect and curate visual inspiration. And we do it for every one of our projects.
Here’s an example of an inspiration board we did for Leo & Kat Evidente, a couple of artistpreneurs in Ventura, California making a go at capturing artistic yet authentic wedding photography for modern couples. 
Here we were inspired by mid-century modern furniture, music and vintage lion sculptures - as well as the color stories found in Leo Evidente’s photography. 
Here is how that inspiration transformed into a logo execution.
How we create our inspiration boards, is we make a visual collage using this found inspiration, combined with snapshots we capture ourselves from our Field Study (including The Start Deck) with our clients. And there’s always words and phrases that come to the surface that are layered in.
The cool thing about the “checking in” with these inspiration boards, is that the final brand design is always a natural next step. So yeah, we don’t quite get that dramatic Don Draper big reveal - but we do get a satisfied client that feels like we really “get them.”
And we’re not just going through this process with artistpreneurs and microbusinesses. When Doug Bannister and his team over at The Stamp Store, an established decorative concrete business, contacted us to brand their new product line, SS Specialties... yep, they got a Pinterest board, too. Because we used the exact same method. Just a different end result, obviously.
Here’s what their inspiration board looked like: 
SS Specialties is inspired by clean and modern brands but their space is full of warmth and Santa Fe details.
When we shared this creative direction with SS Specialties they voiced their opinions - they liked the idea of the compass but didn’t want something busy or antiquated on their final logo. Here’s how the final execution came out: 
They loved that the final logo is something that could be executed both in print, on packaging labels and on a concrete floor and that it was new but was still “them.” We loved gleaning inspiration from a site like Pinterest, but also sharing our inspiration with them along the way.
How do you feel about sharing works in progress? Do you like to be completely finished before you show & tell? Or do you like sharing a rough vision first?
As Tara and I launched Braid we knew we had to have a solid social media plan in tact. We knew we should incorporate some of the big players like Twitter and Facebook in the mix - but we also wanted to go with some more niched routes like Vimeo (vs. the more prolific YouTube) and Pinterest. As we were brainstorming ideas on how to utilize and leverage our brand across these various social media platforms it helped us to think in metaphors.
So let’s pretend like internet-land is a highschool. We’ll call it Social Media High.
Our blog is like a classroom - good for capturing, shaping & sharing what we know and do.
Our newsletters are like the library - for when we have lots of information on one topic.
Twitter is the fun hallway chatter and often directs you from point A to point B.
Facebook is the cafeteria where you join friends in conversation, flirt with your very own Jordan Catalano, and where high fives are the equivalent of the “like” button.
And Pinterest? We thought of it more as a great tool for capturing inspiration but we weren’t quite sure where it fit in within our Social Media High metaphor.
Pinterest is more like the art room where kids who dress in colors of the rainbow, and collect weird (yet beautiful) things in their backpack, hang out. It turns out Pinterest is “our people” - we like it there. And the best part is - on Pinterest we’re not even trying to sell ourselves. It’s not the same kind of hustle and bustle that exists on Twitter and Facebook - over there we’re just quietly curating the contents of our backpacks - so it surprised us to look up and find other people were noticing. And sometimes even hiring us.
This article on Mashable about using niche social media marketing gives the following tip: “Members of these communities won’t respond well to advertising messages; instead, take the time to understand the networks’ specific culture and then determine how to assimilate...” But I think it may be more authentic to “find your crowd” first and then figure out how to weave your business philosophy into that community in a genuine way.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote from Seth Godin’s newest book We Are All Weird: "The community you choose can be a mirror and an amplifier, furthering your interests and encouraging you to push even further."
Do you have a niched social media community that pushes you further? Who is your crowd?
Related:
• How To Pinterest
• Pinterest As An Idea Vault
