I watched a bunch of those videos. The topics were too random for me to consolidate into one cohesive blogpost, so I decided to write about what inspires me to design. This way I can add to the conversations AND knock out a blog post. Win-win, right?
It’s a complicated question to answer. Many things inspire me to design. I think my creative passion is rooted in comic books and movies from childhood. In fact, I recently came across two huge boxes of comic books in my parents attic. Comics and movies allow you to briefly step into the creative minds of others. There’s something attractive about that. Superheroes and science fiction: pure imagination.
But there’s more to it than just an interest. I take everything I like a step farther. I made my own comics, a ton of them. From short newspaper-like strips to full length, stapled together books. And the same was true for movies. I discovered the family camera could be rigged to do stop-motion animation, and my friends and I would all star in whatever movie ideas we could come up with. This literally lasted until I graduated high school, and iMedia has jump-started the interest again.
And of course there’s music. Music has had the biggest artistic influence on me. It helped me develop an overall personal philosophy towards art, and that, of course, spilled over into everything. That philosophy is complicated, but it boils down to simplicity over “flashiness”. (If only George Lucas had applied that to the prequal trilogy…). I’ve never been one to get into anything because everyone else is doing it. I was probably the only kid on the bus listening to Magical Mystery Tour on my Discman in the 7th grade. And in high school I was one of the weirdos who liked Zeppelin (this was before the kids were all wearing those Zeppelin 1977 tour shirts). And, like with art and film, I learned to play the guitar.
But that is my whole thing: go where the ideas are best. Take every other motivation out of the equation. Don’t create just to try out the new trendy thing, do it because it’s a good idea. It’s been a long, hard road to this philosophy. And it’s still hard. Doing things cheap is easy, doing things right is difficult, time consuming and strenuous to everyone involved. But the end results are worth it.
So what inspires me to design? Lot’s of things. Music, art, situations, a desire to express a feeling or emulate the good ideas of others, opportunities. Life inspires me to design.