As a designer, every day tends to be different, it's a whole new pool of emotions and a different set of conditions, and that means your level of inspiration might not be what it was the day before. so before i bore you any further, here are 5 tips that help me with designers block.
1. Workspace
As a designer, your workspace is gonna have a huge impact on your state of mind, being comfortable and in the zone is what i personally believe to be my first step in beating designers block. Now you definitely don't have to break bank to achieve this, you don't even need a monitor for it to feel comfortable, it could just be your laptop in the middle, a notepad and a stack of sticky notes to quickly put down ideas. And like i said, unless you're breaking bank this should suffice. "if not, throw in a potted plant or a mug... and a coaster, because why on earth would you put your mug directly on your desk💀"
2. Music
Music, this one's a lot more complicated than we think, some people prefer absolute silence when they're working,and some people just can't do without it at all, unless there's something playing in the background, or even blaring through their headphones. if you'd prefer total silence, then it's better you just skip this part and scroll on down "Y'know, unless you just enjoyyy reading these articles"
Music is always one of the most important aspects of my everyday life, and it's no different when trying to beat designers block.
The kind of music however, depends on my mood. "I mean it's music, it always depends on my mood" ...Which for me is the deciding factor on whether it motivates you, or distracts you.
Some days i feel like listening to Kendrick, or Jaden while i toss my self into that zen mode, most days I'm stuck with lo-fi because who just doesn't love lo-fi music. but that's up to you, all you need to know is, the kind of music you listen to can sharpen your focus, improve your mood, or just ruin all that for you through out your design session. At the end of this article you'll find a couple links to playlists i believe you'd find quite useful. "hopefully"
3. Visual Content Platforms (VCPs)
VCPs. Now these are almost always my saving grace when it comes to beating designers block, you get to take a look into the awesome world of design and see what other designers are up to. As the name implies, Visual Content Platforms like Pinterest, behance and dribbble are all about one thing, visual content, literally. The only difference between them is that behance and dribble are more design oriented, designed to show off designs, not recipes or outfits, which i guess you could do too. "Y'know, If you ever slapped your designs onto a mock t-shirt". So Whenever you're having difficulties thinking up something from scratch, you could always just throw any of these bad boys into your search bar and get some inspiration, looking at other amazing designs just might be the spark you needed to get going on your own.
4. Twitter
This one probably has some people going seriously?? But the truth is twitter has the tools needed to distract you from just about anything, especially if you've got an active following, and a decent percentage of your mutuals are in the same field as you. Believe me UI/UX designers on twitter are never without a crazy thought to share. It's an interesting community capable of distracting you with their own design problems that you forget about yours, just enough to either get sucked into a new project entirely, or be given an idea on how to fix problems of your own. Either way, design block ...Beaten(In MK announcers voice).
5. Task Switching
Now this might not always be an option, even though it should be. but UI/UX related tasks shouldn't be the only objectives on your to-do list, You can beat designers block by taking design out of the picture, Here's an instance. 30 minutes prior to writing this oh so informal article, I was actually at my neat workspace, just like I'd suggested, listening to music, just like I'd suggested going through Pinterest for landing page ideas, you guessed it, just like I'd suggested. but sometimes you just don't want to design. so i closed my Figma tab and switched to dev.to and got started on what you're reading right now. The point is, to always have something else you can channel your frustrations into, it doesn't have to be writing, but you'll definitely need to find your own pastime. so have at it, and get engrossed in something else you love.
I hope this article helped in one way or the other, and i'd certainly love to hear your own ideas on how to deal with whatever "block" you're facing in your field of work.
As promised here's the links to a couple low-fidelity playlist, and some 9ja vibe pacers
No one's a beginner forever, but everyone's always a learner.
As usual @iamodebiyi
✌🏽✨
Top comments (1)
Good article.