Are You Actually Productive or Are You a Productive Procrastinator?

Episode Transcription Season 3 Chapter 2

Welcome to design speaks. We’re here to empower you to unlock your own inspiration so you can take control of your creativity. I’m your host, Brandi Sea. And joining me is my co-host Julie Haider. Today, we’re going to be talking about ideas. And lots and lots of stuff about ideas. So stay tuned for that coming up later.

Hey, Brandi.

So that was sort of awkward, right? The little intro, like lots and lots of things about ideas. I don’t know. I couldn’t come up with a good title ideas and also some more ideas, all the ideas. So I am usually really cautious about adding more things to My content creation or social media list.

Every time a new platform comes up, I’m like, ah, I don’t know. I’m already pretty committed. I know where my people are, but if something’s new, how do you know if your people might be there? So I’m, barely on Tik TOK. I create some reels for Instagram that I get really good engagement on, but when I had the opportunity to get on clubhouse I decided to give it a try because I know that my.

My strong suit is talking, as everyone knows here, I like to talk. So I was like, okay, so a place where you can talk with people. And so what I, what I found was that it is actually a really amazing place for, for me to be able to sort of. Talk about things the way I do here on the podcast, but with members of my target demographic.

So it’s been really valuable. There’s there is a lot of negatives to jumping in rooms where you don’t get a chance to speak. And all you’re doing is sitting in and listening to a bunch of people with a thousand other people. That’s not as appealing to me unless it’s a topic I’m super interested in.

Cause I have tons of podcasts. I have YouTube. I have, instagram things that I follow that , if I really want to listen to someone, just talk at me, I have plenty of ways to do that. So it’s been a really interesting thing, but what I have found his coming up in a lot of the rooms, which is great for me, but his questions about things that I have solutions to like, where do I find ideas?

And so I’m. I feel like sometimes I’m talking about the same stuff too much, but I have so many different angles on coming up with ideas. Excuse me. And the whole idea thing that I think people are always wanting to know more about this. So I thought we would, we would talk about ideas and the reason I didn’t have a good title for this is because.

I don’t know exactly where this conversation’s going to go, but I will kind of let it go somewhere. I have a rough plan of some things I’d like to talk about, but lots of people have lots of problems with finding ideas and coming up with ideas and stuff. So I really wanted to tech talk about that, but what have you been up to?

What, what are you working on? You actually had to pause our recording earlier because. You’re very popular apparently. Yes. You know, my phone is

just blowing up. Yeah, no, that was call about an engagement session at a national park. So I’m super excited about that. But yeah, so I started a personal Instagram for the first time ever.

I’ve been on Instagram since like 2014.

You’ve never had a personal Instagram. Never had one. Yeah.

In the beginning. In the beginning, my let’s just say in the beginning, I was not as knowledgeable about business things. So my Instagram wasn’t super great. It was mostly personal stuff at that point. I had even gone full-time in my business yet either, but I was working towards that.

But anyway, yeah, it’s just I felt like there were things I wanted to share that. Weren’t necessarily business related. And I do still share some of my personal life on my business account, but you know, like me sharing my. Embroidery that I’m working on isn’t necessarily related to weddings or my target market, you know, but going for a hike that’s related to my target market and stuff like that.

But anyway and also just to take the pressure off of just sharing for fun. I don’t really know what

that’s like, what is that like? Yeah, I get that. I I’m, so Brandi, see my at Brandi. See, I’ve had a sense. Yeah, I think 2011 when Instagram started really coming out and I, it was a mixed bag until of business and professional.

Well, until I think I want to say 26, 20, 15, 2016, somewhere in there range of when I started really creating content, for YouTube and stuff. And then I did also, I did separate it and I created a personal one. Because also, yeah, I, I love sharing pictures of my kids and family. We have tons of family that lives out of state and that’s the only way they get to know our kids and our family.

And so it, it was necessary to separate the two because even though I sometimes, and you should as a business owner, and this is a whole different topic, like post personal things also on business, I can relate to you. They also don’t want to see pictures every week of your kids. Oh, on school, I like to post on my personal everyday pictures so that I don’t lose these everyday moments which has become a whole other pressure.

But yeah, I think that’s really exciting and I saw it actually confused me cause I saw it popped up. Julie Haider has joined Instagram and I was like, you’re like, yeah, that’s awesome. I literally thought someone, you know, someone hacked created a copycat account. Cause there was only one picture.

And I was like, I don’t, I don’t know what this is. And I guess I’ll accept. I want to say friends and then if it’s a scam, I’ll just boot it. But so it’s not a scam. Yeah. So I’m really, I’m excited. Cause I actually, I don’t get to see your personal side either. So that’s really

cool.

I used to share that stuff on Facebook, but the only reason I go on Facebook anymore is for interacting in. Business-related groups. And so I’m like, okay, I need to just go ahead and do

the incidence personal life online. I need a personal life online. That’s awesome. I love it.

And so I know we’re going to be talking about

ideas today, which is going to be connecting to you on ideas inspiration,

but what has inspired

you lately?

So man, speaking of all the years, the years, Feels like years feeling just there is no time. Right. I was going to say a couple months ago I attended the Adobe max conference. And then now just realized in this moment, I think that it was in April, June. I don’t even know how long ago.

So they had the, these they had these really cool prints that you could buy. And I’m going to scooch for the people that are on video. I’m just going to move this, see the little seahorse things. Cool. Yeah. For those of you on audio, I’ll put it in the show notes, but they had these, I think there was four or five different specimens they’re creative.

They were creative specimens. So they’re basically Frankensteined nature things. And they all had these little scientific. Descriptions of what they are. And so you basically buy the one or two ones that you feel you resonate with and you put them on your wall and it’s a scientific version of you sort of.

So I love I’ve had it since the conference, whatever month that was. And I only a couple of weeks ago hung it up in my office. I got a frame and stuff. And so I just was really inspired by. The description. So I’m going to read it to you. So it says few specimens have contributed to innovation in the creative kingdom, more than the Inova auto ID artists known for swimming and flying while outside of most creatures comfort zones.

And so that’s what this creature is. And it was really it was just really inspiring and empowering for me too. Be a little bit more okay. With the fact that I often push against what the norm is in the creative industry for thinking about ideas, inspiration process, I was in a S a, a zoom room.

It was a clubhouse room, the other, the other evening, and they were talking about inspiration. And one of the things that came up was you know, sometimes you just have to be patient with yourself and realize that , You’re not always going to be inspired and it’s okay. And you know, sometimes you just go for a walk and you can take a break.

And I was, I was like, yeah. I mean, yes. And or pushed against it. The way I do is say, okay, but what if you have a deadline, your deadline’s not going to let you go for a walk for an hour, being practical about it. And in the end, one of the other attendees said something like, Hey, I appreciated the pushback. I entered this room thinking that it was going to be a lot more surface level, which is where it started out as, and you kind of took it to a deeper place. And I’m not saying that to toot my own horn or say how awesome I am, but this. Reading this , sort of set me up to be in a good place to be able to speak that into creatives.

Because sometimes I think that I push too hard and make people uncomfortable because they’re like, creativity is a process, man. And it’s super. And I’m just like, yeah, but also we’re paid to be creative. So nobody cares. If you don’t feel creative today, your clients. Are not paying you to feel creative, they’re paying you to be creative.

And so this hanging this up and seeing this little description, that’s actually on the back of the poster, which I think is unfortunate. Cause now I have to print this out and paste it on the front somehow to make it look like a specimen or something. Cause I’m not going to read this ever again, but

I felt like I resonated with this when I bought it, I hadn’t looked at it or I hadn’t touched it since. Till a couple of weeks ago. And so understanding that, , I do tend to fly and swim outside of most creatives comfort zones, but that’s okay. And that’s needed, , that’s something that I think I didn’t realize was something that I did.

Until I kind of read this as it was like, it was a good uplifting, inspiring thing for me to put up as a reminder, not just cause it looks cool and it’s whimsical. And it has a lot of other aspects of my brand and who I am as a person. But , this is something people need and. I’m I’m here for purpose.

And this is part of that.

So,

well, this week I’ve been listening to a song by the artists. John Baptiste he was one of the primary musical contributors to the Disney Pixar film soul that came out not too long ago. It’s got a really jazzy, energizing, optimistic vibe. And I love the lyrics. Almost gonna read a couple of them.

We’ve done a lot of living. We work in over time. Don’t need another million. You got that gold mine. You’ve got that something special. And there’s a lot of the lyrics. It’s a really short song. What a lot of the lyrics are just about focusing on what’s important, who is important around you. It’s not, you know, money, isn’t everything, but these relationships that we have are, and I think that I really enjoyed.

That. And what’s not to love about an optimistic song about meeting each other, especially in these times, sappy. Yes. I don’t love sappy movies, but I do love lots of sappy in my music. Let’s be honest. So. That’s why I brought this song. It’s been on my playlist for awhile now, and I wanted to share it with you.

So that’s, that’s what I’ve been listening to this week.

thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Let’s talk about ideas, Julie, what are ideas anyways? Like when I say Julia, have you had any good ideas? I just feel like, I don’t know that people have the correct outlook on what an idea even is before we even go into how to find them or where to find them.

That’s kind of a tough question. I think we tend to think of it as some new thought that you have, but I Just from I, so lately I’ve been working a lot on a lot of stuff in my business that has inspired me and given me ideas. And it’s not always new groundbreaking stuff, but it’s something that will It’s kind of problem solving, I guess, in a way.

Even if you don’t know , even if you’re not like, here’s my problem, what’s the answer. Sometimes you come up with an idea that you’re like, wow, this would be a great fit for this area of things. And yeah, it’s not always something new, it’s just something that you haven’t tried yet that could potentially work.

It’s potential. I don’t know.

Yeah no,

I don’t know if that’s a good answer.

No, that’s really good. That’s literally , what I was trying to get at is I think that as creatives, especially , as humans, we do this, but as creatives, especially we’re always on the hunt for the new thing, the next big thing, or I need to have the new innovative idea or do something that no one has ever seen before.

And. You know, I think that when we’re only ever chasing ideas, that we’re putting a lot of emphasis on the wrong thing, and that’s a lot of the reason, I say, trust the process, not necessarily just the strategic process that I teach, but the process of ideating the process of your creative journey, instead of always just trying to look for that one end thing.

That’s pretty overrated. It’s just thinking about ideas all the time. When do you actually get to your idea? How do you actually get to find one? And if you find one, what do you do with your idea? Because an idea is useless unless you do something with it. So. I was, I was writing my notes for this episode and I came up with this really it’s probably goofy, but it is what it is and it’s who I am.

So we’re just gonna run with it. I was thinking that if the idea is the treasure, right, an idea is a treasure. It is like something shiny. It’s something valuable. Sometimes it’s really unique, but if the idea is the treasurer. If you think about yourself as a pirate. So if you are a pirate pirates, like treasure, so the story say, and so we’ll just say we’re creative pirates. This is getting weirder by the second.

Can I, can I have a little hook hand?

I’ll make you one. I’ll make it out of a, I don’t know. What’s something funny. Design-y. I have no idea, but I’ll make you one. So if, if we are creative pirates and we’re always on the hunt for treasure, right, this is going to sound goofy, but it’s going to make sense.

So if you’re looking for treasure and you are a pirate, do you ask other pirates? where do I find the treasure? No,

They’re not going to tell you

because they want that for themselves and you want it for yourself. So why would you ask someone else? Okay. So if you wait around on your ship, do you, do you just sit there and wait for the treasure to fall in your lap?

Not going to happen.

No!, No, that would hurt first of all, if it just like fell from the sky into your lap, but also it doesn’t happen like that. You have to search for treasure. And so if you are a creative pirate needing ideas, you can’t look at other people for their ideas, which is the downfall of a lot of creatives.

They’re always looking on dribble and Pinterest and all this you’re, you’re looking at other creatives. For their treasure when you should be looking for your own treasure. And when you’re sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, it’s no different than sitting in a rocking chair, on your ship as a pirate, and just hoping that the treasure will fall out of the sky.

And I’m not discounting that sometimes you just randomly have epiphanies . Sometimes you, you do need that non-thinking space too, in the shower. Go. Oh my gosh, that’s the thing I needed. But comparatively, if you put yourself in a position to find the treasure, if you have a map, if you have a place to look, you are more likely to find it as opposed to just wandering around the desert Island.

Just hoping somehow some way you’ll just like stub your toe on a big treasure box. So I know that was weird, but I hope it made sense. So what I’m hoping to talk about today is , This idea of I always talk about maps and plans in regards to the strategic process, because the process that I teach uses a word map as a literal map to your designs being good.

But there’s also sort of map ish, things that you can set up for yourself to give places, to look, to find ideas, to find something unique to you. And I always say unique to you because. I really don’t think there’s nothing new under the sun. Anything that I do that I feel is really cool and interesting is probably been done in some iteration somewhere in history.

And maybe, I don’t know it, and maybe I’m not directly I’m, I’m hopefully not. I do a lot of work to make sure I’m not ripping anybody off, but there’s really nothing brand new. So. Then the question comes back to, okay. So how do you find ideas? And that’s kind of what I was hoping to talk about in a weird wacky creative pirate way.

I like it.

So I talk a lot about uncommon inspiration and the reason that I call it, that is because. If you say common inspiration, I would say common inspiration is the stuff that everybody’s looking at, where you’re asking the other pirates for their ideas for their treasure. And while it’s good to be inspired by other creatives, that’s why we share what, you know, that’s why we share our work so that we can show the world what we’re doing so we can inspire other creatives.

So if we’ve been in the business a long time, we can inspire younger creatives to see what they can do with their skills, but uncommon inspiration. Is something that maybe other people aren’t looking at, and if they’re looking at it, they’re not looking at it the way you are. You and I are going to look at the exact same stuff completely differently.

We may look at different details in a, in a book differently. We may look like we may read the same book in different passages are gonna jump out at us. And so it’s a mouthful. And I know that, and it’s always a lot to type for hashtags on Instagram, but uncommon inspiration is this really unique thing.

And I just want, I want people to know that looking where everybody else looks is only gonna make your work look like everybody else’s. Andy J pizza says you art, what you eat and. What he talks about in that is , just , if you eat junk food all the time your body’s gonna start feeling and probably eventually looking junkie and not anything about , diets or anything like that.

Outside of that, it’s just how you feel. And so if you’re constantly looking at the same stuff, if you are, if you are inhaling lots of the same. Inspiration, you will only be producing the same kind of stuff that you looked at. And so the only way to have uncommon and unique work is to look and uncommon and unique places.

I’m going to take a drink of water, so I’m going to leave.

Yeah. And I think you’re going to feel like your junk food analogy. You’re going to feel better about that too. I, so I think I mentioned in the last episode that I. Went through all of the copy in my website and pretty much read through all of it.

So much work when I launched that website in 2018, I unfortunately looked at what a lot of other leaders in the elopement photographer industry were doing, because I wasn’t sure what direction to go in. And that copy did not feel.

As authentic.

Yeah. Authentic to me. And it didn’t feel as powerful speaking to my target market. And I’ve done a lot of work since then to , get to this point. So finding my, why going through the StoryBrand framework that helped tremendously. But this time when I rewrote it, I have not been on anybody’s website in a really long time. And I try to keep it that way. I don’t want to see what they’re doing as it is I actually, so I came up with a new title for myself because I felt like photographer wasn’t enough, but saying I’m a wedding planner is a direction that I.

You know, it’s not quite really what I am, but almost right. So I did a ton of brainstorming and I came up with experienced creator. So my title now is adventure, elopement, experience, creator, and photographer. And then I put it up on my website and one of my friends are like, Hey, this other mutual friend of ours, who’s also an adventure photographer also calls themselves that.

And I was like, dang it. True that , you know, it’s hard to come up with something new. There are only some many words in our language to choose from. You could always choose a different language. You didn’t know

that he had that. , I didn’t, you know, take it from him. It was, it feels me because I came up with it because it, it I was looking at what I am offering and who I am and what my brand is and everything.

But yeah, I love the copy that I’ve written now because. I didn’t look at somebody else to try to copy. I thought of like, what is it that people coming here who my target market , what do they need to hear and what am I offering? And how can I make it sound great and enticing to them? And I just wasn’t looking at anything else.

And now I’m really proud of it and I’m not just like, yeah, I have some copy on my website. It’s okay. I guess now I’m like, yeah. Okay. It’s doing it’s working for me. Right. And I think it’s really important for those blinders on and just not be looking around at that sort of thing. It’s okay to look outside your industry too.

But again, once you get attached to that idea of , Oh, this is really good. I wish I had thought of this. Then you, then you start to want to copy.

Where’s the line of , am I stopping?

And yeah, just, it feels icky.

It does. And I mean, and here’s the thing I have to say that I it’s hard for me to accept, but I do know that there are there are designers that don’t feel Vicky about doing that.

There are designers and creatives that feel totally okay with looking at other people’s stuff and just tweaking it a little to quote unquote, make it their own. And those, I I’ve decided that I it’s kind of a moot effort for me to Sort of try to make them change teams, so to speak, to convince them that that’s not good.

Because they are that’s, they aren’t in this for the same reason that I’m in this, they’re not in this to solve problems. They’re not in this to do what designers are supposed to do. And so just as a side note, if you ever . Interact or find those people that are just like, I changed this, that, and the , I changed the colors and I put my own typeface on this template thing.

Yeah. I’m making money. What’s the difference? I would say always speak your truth. And if, if you feel like they are doing something wrong, please call them out. But also. Sometimes people are just okay with staying where they are and not growing and not trying to be innovative and not trying to find their own uncommon inspiration, which why wouldn’t you‽ But I know that they’re out there.

And so just as an encouragement to, to those of you who are like me, that sort of start to get down about the state of the design industry sometimes, like, why is everything so homogenized? why does everybody’s work look like everybody’s work? And instead you just do you and. You make your impact.

Yeah. You make your impact. And if they see the downside to this is that sometimes when you start to make your Mark, then people want to copy you. And so just, just being aware of , what that looks like is really important. So I wasn’t planning on talking about that, but just sort of he popped into my head, like I said, I didn’t know where this conversation I was going to go.

So that’s why the title is TBD at this time. So, so yeah, go ahead.

Knowing that, like there kind of aren’t any new ideas for the most part. How do you look back at history? I always think about fashion. Like the nineties is coming back and fashion. I’m like, I’ve already done this.

Oh man. I can’t even

Cuban about like some of the clothing from the eighties was kind of. Twenties and it’s, it’s just really interesting how, I think in fashion a lot of times an era gets repeated, but only parts of it, of course. But how do you look back at history and pull inspiration from that?

Where you know, it’s not current by any means, so it’s not on everybody’s radar, but pulling from that, but making it your own and making it updated and. And something new from something old.

Yeah, totally. So I’ve got a humongous list of things you can look at for inspiration and how you, you look at those things and how you use those things.

So I’ve, I think I’ve talked a lot in general in the past of like, you can look outside, you can look at fashion, you can look at travel. You can look at books, but in coaching sessions over the past year, I’ve realized that that’s not enough. Cause a lot of people aren’t built like me and don’t think like me. And so they don’t know how, if they’re not trained. Right.

The other weird analogy that you will now be introduced to on this podcast is the idea that finding inspiration and seeing inspiration requires a third eye. And so. I know that my third eye is always open. Like always it’s always open. And so for other people it’s kind of sleeping and even if it’s open, they’ll look at maybe they’re in a, in a history museum, speaking of history.

And they’ll just go, yeah, there’s lots of history here. Not really feeling inspired. So looking at history, I’ll talk about it a couple of different ways. So. One way is a little more literally like as a designer . Researching and things like looking at historical documents for typography looking at if you are trying, especially in this, comes into the process that I teach in the research phase.

If you have a concept that is time related. So if yours is art nouveau, Chic or something like that, you can look at documents. You can look at things from that era instead of getting on Pinterest and looking up art nouveau, chic design, which is what most people do. Okay. So what does art nouveau dig into?

Why, why is it even called that it was art? Nouveau is just new art in French. And so okay, so what does that mean? Why did they call it that? And. Learning about the history itself. Look at maps, look at textures, look at the kind of like inks that they use. Look at textiles that they used in their bedding.

If you’re researching France, look at the stuff from Louis the 14th, you can look at the lube you can look at Versailles for things . You can look for colors that they use in certain areas because certain colors were not available to certain people. And if you’re like just looking deeper into these things look at the fashion.

Men wore heels and it was fashionable for a time in. History, not just French, but American history and look at the kind of things that they did. You can look at architecture and not just like, you have to be able to go a level deeper with uncommon inspiration and go, okay, this building’s really cool.

Okay. But what’s cool about it. What do I like about this building? Like if you and I are both standing in front of like the Chrysler building in New York city, I’m going to be interested in one thing and you are going to be interested in another thing and that’s exactly what uncommon inspiration is.

And then I can go, okay. Wow. I really love the art deco, like metal work on this building and take a picture of it and take it home and do something with it. And that’s where those that’s. Like a way to look at history and like find some unique things about it. And in that’s how you can like take an old thing and make it new is by like, okay, I see this texture that they used on the bedding at Versailles.

And how can I use that in this design that I’m working on? Maybe, maybe it’s. Oh, A weird overlay on something, maybe it’s you’re doing like a collage look and you can make it look like you cut out a piece of cloth and put it on something. All of those things require you to think a little bit deeper.

And like we talked about about goal setting and it’s all about asking why, right. So it’s not just, I see a thing I like. But why, why do I like it? What’s cool about it. And so the street is like a really robust a really robust place to look because there’s so like, it encompasses so many things. And the other thing that I really like to use is, and I think I’ve talked about this before.

It’s one of my all time favorite go-to books is allegory and symbols in art. It’s a book that I got from the Getty museum. And I go to a lot of museums because I, this is a huge point of inspiration for me is all these different things. But basically it looks, it shows you like the symbology and different works of art throughout history.

And so then when you’re creating even things like a logo, you can go, okay, well, if my concept is maybe. Summer in Paris or something. I don’t know. That’d be a weird concept for a logo, but we’re just going to run with it. You can go. Okay. So summer, so summer is one of those things that has a lot of symbology in art.

So what kinds of things symbolized summer? So things like sunrise. And so maybe that InCorp, maybe you can incorporate that into the logo somehow, because w what’s like a really line art sort of simple way, an icon version of sunrise. And maybe that can be something that you play in that maybe no one else thought of, because they’re just looking at summer.

Okay. What’s summer popsicles flip-flops as opposed, you know, as opposed to like going a level deeper, that was a long answer. That’s

okay. Yeah, that was always the one. My favorite things like in my art history class in college was I remember, and I don’t remember the name of the painting, but we were looking at one painting in particular and I just couldn’t believe like how many different symbols were put into this, like seemingly very simple image.

And it was just full of symbolism. And at first she looked at it and be like, Okay. Why was that interesting? Like, why was that scene interesting.

Yeah. Why was this important and why do I have to memorize this again?

Yeah. But then, like, I think we spent an entire class period just talking about, you know, this one painting because there was so much hidden in it.

And I also loved that you mentioned like, not just looking at the visual things from history, but also like. You know let’s say like blue was a very popular color in a certain time period, but like why? Well, because they didn’t have it before and suddenly, like, it was like a symbol of wealth to be able to use this color of blue in your clothing or your pottery or whatever.

So just like knowing that kind of stuff going beyond just like the visual and also looking outside of the industry. So looking at architecture when you’re dealing with. Fashion and, and stuff like that. So I think that helps it. You steer away from direct copying because, you know, if you’re looking at a dress and you’re designing a dress, it’s a whole lot easier to copy that than if you’re looking at handwriting, you know, the affirmative document and you’re working on a dress.

Totally. And the thing about the thing about finding a new. Quote unquote, interesting, innovative idea. These days in the era that we live is all about mixing things. It’s all about mixing genres. So all the, all the crazy good new music. And we talked about this before we started recording that, like, You had a band, do you want to introduce me to, and they like mix a couple of genres and that’s really the only way to sort of have a chance at coming up with something new and interesting is mixing things.

Because I think up until what, like I would say, I would say like the nineties was the last like clear line of like like you could say that was this year. And then the eighties, you could say that was this year and all the way back through history, you could kind of pinpoint areas. But like, I think after the two thousands sort of like, okay, like there’s like the hipster look, I guess, but even that is sort of like that sort of grabbed onto a little bit of like the nineties, like grunge with like the flannels and beanies and like mixed it a little bit with like the eighties mom, Jean thing.

And like, so. Even like even fashion and stuff now, like all the really interesting things are happening because they are mixing stuff. They are, they are creating this like, Weird soup of something and something and something else. The, the leftover soup, if you will, it’s like what’s in the fridge for dinner.

I don’t know. There’s a bar. There’s like a casserole. And like there’s some red chili from Frito pie. The other night let’s like, make like a, like a soup. And that’ll be something new. So it’s sort of like, gosh, I’m making a lot of weird analogies on this episode. This is what happens when we talk about inspiration.

So it’s like that, it’s definitely, it’s definitely being able to mix and mix and match things.

Yeah, no, I think, I think with fashion, it’s especially easy to just look and be able to see that of like, Oh, you pulled this for this and this from this. And yeah, definitely.

So. The, the other, like, let’s, let’s go down fashion a bit because that’s definitely I’m on like the top of my list for things that and I want to be too careful and I try to make it really varied because I understand that not everybody finds history interesting, and not everybody is into fashion.

But what I want to make really clear is that not only are these things interesting to me, because I’m interested in them like art history, but there are interesting things and inspiring things. Everywhere. And if you look, you will find something that you are interested in, in anything. So, so if just go back to history really quickly, like if you go, I’ve talked to many people that are like, Oh my gosh, you guys take your kids to art museums.

They must be so bored. And it’s like, actually they’re not. Because from the time that they could sit still and look at a book, we’ve looked at children’s versions of art. And like like Vincent Vango from the time they were two and would sit still and look at books for kids about Vincent van Gogh. And so finding things that they are interested in in that.

And so you, as a grown person can be trained. You can teach an old dog new tricks, you can walk into an art museum and be like, okay, maybe I don’t like all of this stuff, but what do I like. And go to that thing and spend some time with it and then ask why you like it. So, but I am very interested in fashion.

I was going into the fashion industry as a model, like an after high school and decided I wanted to be on the other side of the creative of this kind of stuff. And so, but fashion is one of those things that is so like it’s like a sister to graphic design. Fashion design is like right up against it.

And it’s like a twin sister almost because when there are trends in design, they almost always start first with fashion. Like. And we think that as designers, like we’re the trendsetters and we’re not, we, we come after the fashion industry and that’s why it’s love so much. Like what Leatrice Iceman teach teaches on color theory and stuff, because she, she always, she is in the, in the business of setting like the color trends for the year.

And who does she hand those off to first the fashion industry. So. It comes from her, goes to fashion, then goes to design, then goes to product design and sort of like trickles down from there. Yeah. Yeah. So looking at fashion is really interesting because like you said, don’t just look at a dress if you’re designing a dress.

Okay. So we’re graphic designers. We don’t design dresses, right? Unless it’s like a hobby. So what can you look at? You can look at lines. A lot of really like high-end home culture designers like to use really bold lines, bold colors. You can look at patterns. You can look at how they mix colors for color palettes graphics.

Like there’s a lot of designers that do use a lot of like graphic elements and how they arrange them, how things move. Especially like, if you are in the like motion graphics sort of end, like. How the model moves and how they design that clothing to fit on him, his or her body to make sure that like it flows correctly.

There’s like geometry involved and like so many things that you can find in the fashion industry also that you may not have looked at outside of like, Oh, that’s a really interesting dress. I would never wear that, but it looks cool. Like, yeah. Again, looking deeper. Yeah,

absolutely.

So I think we’re going to have to stop there because I could talk for ages and we’ve got like three, there’s still like four other categories that I was wanting to touch on. But I think those two are probably two of like the really big ones that people have a hard time. When I say like, look at history, look at fashion.

And they’re like, I don’t know what you mean. What am I looking for? Exactly. And so. Getting back to ideas. If the idea is the treasure, you have to set yourself up a good way to find it. As a creative pirate, you need a map. And so these two things were maybe two points on a map, two possible locations for that treasure.

And. The more you look in the more you practice not just roaming around, not just sitting and waiting for it to fall into your lap, not just asking other pirates for their ideas. The more you are going to find that you have something unique in your brain to offer the world. And that finding ideas really depends on you being proactive.

Yeah, I don’t like the idea of the lazy designer. I just feel like it’s lazy to just sit and wait for inspiration because. You could wait forever and then what? Yeah.

Yeah. You’re never Excel that way. Like you might be okay. Right. Not going to be

amazing. Even the pros had a process of inspiration, right?

Like Michael Angelo and stuff. Like they had to learn these skills to be able to make this great work. They didn’t just sit back and hope that like, The gods, like the snowed upon them, like the magic drawing and painting skills. So don’t wait, don’t wait for ideas. Don’t wait for inspiration. You can go out and find it.

You can set yourself up for success and. That way you’re ready. Like you have some tools, you have some inspiration, so that way, and you have an idea, you know what you’re going to do with it? You know what you’re going to use it for. All right. Well, that’s our episode today. All about ideas, ideas, ideas. If you would leave us a review on iTunes, five stars would be amazing.

You can always leave us a note on Instagram at design speaks podcast or visit design speaks, podcast.com for all our show notes and links. This podcast is produced by Kenneth Kniffen and Dakota cook. Shout out to Colin from Vespertine for our amazing theme music. It is a project of Me Brandi Sea and is produced in the shadow of the watermelon pink Sandia mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico, as always.

Thank you so much for being here for watching for listening. Until next time .