The Most Unusual Places to Find Design Inspirations

As a designer, you are always on the lookout for new design inspirations.

inspirations to enhance your designs and improve your skills. In most of the times, inspiration usually comes from very unlikely sources. A child with a splash of paint on his pants can trigger your creative mind and inspire you to come up with something.

Sometimes, it was out of watching the setting rays of the sun where you got the killer idea you implemented on your latest project. Ultimately, every designer wants a fresh injection of never before implemented ideas to enable them come up with unique works that will make them proud and shine as designers.

Irrespective of your source of design inspirations, they will always come from the world around us. People, animals, trees, infrastructure, water, etc., are likely places of getting inspired in this world of design. With that said, here are some of the most unusual places where lots of designers have claimed to have received design inspirations-:

Street Art

When you are on the streets, your mind is occupied with your destination, and you have petite time to look around and see how beautiful certain things can be. Besides, people think so lowly of street artists. Hence, they don’t think that they can get any inspiration from there. However, it is good to remember that out of humility, great things arise.

There are a wide variety of design inspirations if you will consider the street a worthy place to get inspired. Just open your eyes and look around and it won’t take long before you get an idea about that graffiti on the wall or that magnificent painting fading away on the next corner store.

Packaging from Foreign Goods

Foreign packaging is another cool but unusual place to find lots of design inspiration. Suppose you are working on a marketing product, and you wanted something relevant to the industry but not similar to what you already have in the domestic market, you can give foreign packaging a try. This is because for a product to find a foreign market, there is always a lot of research, including marketing and branding considerations and with them, you may find great design inspirations to apply to your designs.

Music

Most designers never envision that music is also a source of magnificent design inspirations. In its original form, music is an art and it takes inspiration for the musician to come up with the words and turn them into a song. Try listening to different kinds of music and discover the ones that make you tick and make your brain start flowing with ideas. Simply try to imagine the various situations or scenarios that the songs are talking about and see if you can give them life through your artistic prowess.

Architecture

You don’t have to visit Chicago or New York City and marvel at their architecture for you to get design inspirations. Look around and see what you have locally and think about why the creators of those building designed them the way they are. Every great architectural design will always have some hidden meaning or message.

While you try to figure out what that might be from the local buildings, it is likely that your design instincts will kick into action and start presenting to you the various ideas you can come up with from such architecture. That is how people get design inspirations from architecture.

Shopping Mall

The shopping mall is another gem where you can find a plethora of design inspirations. It will amaze you to realize that everything inside the mall has undergone through some design work. Talk a walk through the various stores,  and consider the shapes, colors, themes, orientation and any other thing that might inhibit the tiniest features of design in them. You won’t imagine the kind of design inspirations you can get from shopping malls.

The Library

The library is another silent place where many people have walked in and left with a lot of design inspirations. To understand the power of the library in bringing to life your imagination ability, just walk in and pick a book, a journal, or an article and let your creative mind get to work and start trickling in the design inspirations you will be getting from what you will be seeing. You can mainly check out the children’s section and find out the illustrations in their books for more inspirations.

Move away from it all

Sometimes the best place to find design inspirations is when you move away from it all. The mind tends to close its imagination skills when under pressure or when you have to think about so many things at the same time. Occasionally, just think of nothing! You will find inspiration coming on its own when you don’t have to struggle and force you creative mind to get to work.

Use this article to prevent mistakes when you want to turn your inspiration into designs!