Creativity is something that is inside everyone. It's there but you don't see it, it's available but you can't feel it. But to make it usable when you need it, you have to make sure that it's always hot. Creativity is just like your body and it should be trained everyday. Lack of "exercise" can put your creativity out of shape - blunt - and darkens your imagination.
Imagination is the first thing you need when you do a design. With ideas in mind, you use your creativity skills to put all the necessary elements you imagined to your canvas, paper, or screen.
Exercising your mind to brighten your creativity skills involve many things. With a sharp and maintained creativity skills, you can ensure that your mind can focus to create a design whenever you want.
Doing some creativity exercises would also ensure that you can do your projects effectively. But aside from that, it's an absolute normal that once in a while your creative mind will run out ideas. But you can still minimize the chances that your mind goes blank by putting those imagination skills always hot.
Below is some exercise you can do to keep those creative juices flowing.
Sketching Your Mind
The easiest and the most usual way to express ideas on paper, and everyone has done it. Sketching is something we all have done when we were kids. People at a young age are full of inspiration, and sketching is usually the first thing they do when they're inspired.
Since we've all done that, why not use that simple exercise to boil those creativity skills hot?
Imagine stuffs you see around you. Focus on them and see what interests you. After you see something that you can replicate, put your eyes aside and focus to re-imagine that thing on your mind and make up something about it. Take a piece of paper or open your favorite software and create you own version of the object.
You can also use the internet to search for pictures and photos. Or you can look at comic books, fantasy novels and video games cover, posters and many visually appealing graphics. Focus on what you want to replicate and bring it to life with your imagination and skills.
Manipulating a Photo
One of the best photo manipulating software is probably the Adobe Photoshop. If you're used to the tools it has to offer, you can open the software and put your design skill to a good use.
Take a picture of a thing, or a scenery that you like. Or browse through your photo gallery and see what interests you. Open it in Photoshop and imagine it as something else. To help you out, you can take another picture or photo, and put it side-by-side, beside the previous one.
Try to imagine both pictures merged into one, and seek every object that is available in those pictures that you can use.
With Photoshop, you can alter the dimension, the colors, the shapes, the perspective, scale, position and many many more. Try to put your imagination into a good use and create something out of your mind. Photoshop alone is already a great arsenal to put your imagination to life, what limits it is your mind.
Designing a Logo
A logo can be the simplest thing you can do in terms of design, but also the most sophisticated one. A logo is one of the fundamentals of graphics design since it can illustrate an identity through the use of a symbols, colors and shapes.
A professional graphic designer has a great responsibility for this task since a logo is usually associated with a company, a brand, or a product. How a logo is designed can pronounce the future of the company/brand/product marketing strategies.
Open your favorite web browser and search for famous logos you've known so far. See how it represents what it is representing, and understand how that single image can be the power that powers its identity. Then look at less famous logos you know to see what makes them different.
Take those logos and try creating news ones based on their originals. With a fine logo criteria in your mind, what you do is not playing with its identity, but see how you can make that logo to represent something else. Make as many concepts as you can, and see which works best.
You can try altering the colors and shapes, as well as the typography. Put your creativity by trying to make that logo more appealing, at least to you.
Playing with Typography
Typography is one of things that is difficult to master. Ranging with a lot of typeface, a typography should be able to reflect what the words are about to say. Typography plays an important role in the readers' mind. The correct choice of typography can alter the mood of someone when reading, and make them blend more into the emotions.
Line breaks, character spacings and its colors are all essential in creating a harmonious design.
The easiest way to play with typography is by looking at your favorite quote. Let's say you have a favorite movie where your favorite actor/actress has said something that really struck your mind. Take that quote and write it down on a piece of paper.
Then you think about what the quote really means, not just what it says. After you know what the words are trying to express, open your computer and search for a picture/photo that can describe them best. For example, if your chosen quote is about love, you can look for pictures/photos about two people walking together by the beach holding hands. Or if your quote is about family, you look for a picture/photo that is colorful and full of laughter with a child among people he/she loves.
With a picture/photo that represents the quote best, you can then browse through all of your available fonts and typefaces to see what works well with that quote. After you choose the one that you think best, change the colors, size and position.
Try to put the combination so they express emotions. Quotes can play with your feelings just by itself, but with the appropriate typography and background picture/photo. the words can really reach your emotions a lot better. One example is a meme.