Inspiration is not only the source of creation, but also the original power to promote the development of students' works. However, there are too many inspirations for the production of works collection, which will make people lose focus at a time, miss the best opportunity to deepen the inspiration, and consume a lot of time and energy. What if there are too many inspirations for works collection? How to screen efficiently? Now Natural Light will take you to talk about this topic, and lay a good foundation for the following design steps!

Not long ago, a student who changed his major to study graphic design came to us. He had been working for two years after graduation. Both his major and his work had nothing to do with art. He started to learn painting and software by himself out of his love for design, and also decided to resign to study abroad because of his love. When he came to the natural light, he also brought a thick hand drawing book with him, telling us that this is the inspiration and material he has collected for nearly a year since he decided to study abroad. He originally planned to do several projects himself before applying for DIY. But the more inspiration you collect, the more you stay in the material stage. You have no way to do screening but to verify it with practice one by one. When you meet a dead end, you will return to try the next As a result, there are few good projects, but the thinner the material, the thicker the product.

The problem faced by this student is not an example. In the face of too many work collection production inspirations, I don't know how to choose, even not only the passionate zero based students, but also many students with mature skills in this major are also difficult to accurately find inspiration that can spread in depth.

　　 01. Finding Themed Inspiration

Maybe some students will wonder, isn't inspiration the theme? In fact, it is not. Let's take the inspiration book of the student in the case just now as an example. Most of the inspiration recorded by the student is the inspiration he drew from other cases, such as graphic creativity, color matching, design techniques and other specific creative points.

When students use these scattered ideas as the divergence point, because of the lack of specific themes as the foundation, it is easy to have a lack of stamina in the practice process, and because students have not established a perfect idea before looking for inspiration, it is easy to ignore the relationship between reference and "borrowing" in the subsequent practice process.

Xuelun, who received the LCF clothing design offer, recorded the process of inspiration diffusion in the work collection

On the contrary, the theme is not equal to inspiration, just like a poster design with the theme of National Day arranged by Party A for you. When the theme is available, we still need to collect inspiration and translate it into concrete design results.

After understanding the premise that inspiration is not equal to theme, students have two choices to select inspiration. First, we can sum up a category of options with the same theme characteristics from the existing inspiration, such as cultural category, social phenomenon category, visual element category, and then make associative thinking according to the same category, thus hitting out the most ingenious topics.

Collect Xuelun's works of LCF clothing design offer

The second type is to determine the theme first, and find the supporting inspiration materials with the purpose. During the process of collecting inspiration, students are also based on their own aesthetic orientation and interest points. The original factors that trigger our thinking are the best basis for determining the theme.

　　 02. Find deep inspiration

Good inspiration has a soul. A small idea needs to be captured, saved, excavated, refined and transformed from its birth to its landing to realize a complete process. The so-called soul inspiration is the depth that allows us to extend to the landing.

So how to find a deep source of inspiration? We can learn how to capture inspiration from the very beginning. There are many reasons to stimulate our inspiration, such as a scene, a work, a book, a memory, etc. When we stimulate creative thinking due to external influences, we should learn how to record in addition to timely recording.

Yucheng, who received Parsons graphic design offer, was inspired by the nightmares of clowns when he was young

Recording is not only to take a picture and save a picture, but also to record our senses, emotions and thoughts as detailed as possible. These are the basis for repeated queries in the subsequent process that can help us constantly return to the scene of inspiration.

The reason for this is also because a full and deep source of inspiration must not be the result of a single thought, but through the entire creative process to continue to deepen and enrich. In the process of promoting the project, many students will think that the theme I choose is not good enough once they encounter a bottleneck? The inspiration of the collection is not clever enough?

Collect Xuelun's works of LCF clothing design offer

In fact, it is often not, but we need to continue thinking and deepen the depth of inspiration from a broader dimension. One of us accepted Parsons before Parsons School of Design One of his students was inspired by the Christian definition of seven deadly sins.

But in fact, this theme has been widely used in many comics, games, films, literary works, etc. It is still difficult to find a new entry point, so that he once fell into a bottleneck in the creative process, and even wanted to give up this project theme.

Harvest the works of Yucheng, a student of Parsons graphic design offer

In this process, the teacher encouraged him to continue to expand on the previous inspiration, try and explore the possibility of other transformations, and then the students came up with a special way to express his understanding of the "seven deadly sins", and the most critical connection point/element is "animals".

For example, the gorilla has always been an enduring classic image. Usually docile gorillas will behave angrily after being provoked, such as "storming" and "thumping". This contrast is a good representation of "anger", one of the seven deadly sins.

Harvest the works of Yucheng, a student of Parsons graphic design offer

　　 03. Find the inspirations of works collection with resonance

Sometimes when students choose inspiration, in order to highlight their creativity and uniqueness, they deliberately want to choose some non mainstream, sub cultural or even extreme perspectives, such as sex, politics, religion, etc., hoping to make their works stand out by taking another shortcut.

Even many times, students want to be unique, and they don't know or like these niche fields very much. In fact, I don't recommend such a topic selection method, because the source of inspiration must come from their own real resonance and thinking direction, which will stimulate our original motivation to explore the depth of the project, Only in this way can the works give real appeal.

Inspiration source of the work project of Cuizhu who received the offer of Fit Fashion Management major

Secondly, uniqueness is relative. Admissions officers are knowledgeable and have a huge difference in culture and experience from us. Once we choose an angle that does not resonate with admissions officers but steps on sensitive areas, our final achievements will be greatly reduced. This adventurous way of finding inspiration should be avoided as far as possible.

In contrast, some inspiration that seems common or too detailed is the direction students can choose. First of all, common does not mean ordinary. For example, many people will choose some inspiration elements about childhood and childhood. Although the themes are much the same, everyone's emotional processing is different, and the resonance and divergence angles that can be harvested will certainly be different.

Other small inspiration materials, some students think that they are too concrete or subtle to pay attention to. In fact, if we can use professional knowledge to summarize rules and values from small materials, it will lead to different thinking angles.

Obtaining the works collection of Zhiyi's classmates from SVA's pure art major offer

Admission Royal College of Art Yuan, a student of interaction design, has a project whose inspiration comes from a blind child. From understanding the reality of his lack of playmates, she has extended an accessible social game system that she wants to design for them. The final work is to make blind children meet friends in similar situations when participating in online treasure hunting in the form of treasure hunt.

Compared with the audience selected for other works, Yuan's inspiration source is indeed relatively small, but in the end, starting from her own real feelings, she began to investigate the preferences, life, psychology, medical problems and social care problems of blind children, and finally completed this complete and influential project work.

Collected works of Yuan from Huangyi Interactive Design offer

We have provided some ideas for you to choose inspiration, but in general, if we want to select the materials that can produce inspiration for the collection of works we use as efficiently as possible, the most important thing is whether we have a solid professional foundation and rigorous design ideas, which will also determine whether we have the ability to turn inspiration into real project results; Secondly, in the process of selecting inspiration, we need to be forward-looking and purposeful, and be able to make correct predictions for each step. Among them, drawing more thought maps is a very effective way, which can help students to clearly sort out and extend inspiration and ideas.

Finally, there is no difference between good and bad inspiration for the production of the collection. As long as students can find the most perceptive or good way to spread it, and extend it step by step according to our logical thinking and critical thinking, the final harvest must be the best satisfying work!

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