Issue 2: All That Glitters
On sparkle, shine, and everything fine.
💎 Shine bright like a diamond
As an Irish dancer, child of the 90s, and person of impeccable taste, there are few things in this world I love more than sparkle. I’ve been known to stay up until 3 am gluing thousands of Swarovskis to dance dresses on multiple occasions, wear iridescent sequin crop tops in public on purpose, and buy hair tinsel, this year, as a grown adult. Sparkle demands attention, sparkle makes things special, but most importantly, more often than not, sparkle is joy for the sake of joy.
In recent years, minimalism — the idea that we should keep only what is necessary and nothing more — has become a dominant philosophy in graphic design. I don’t exactly hate it. Down with clutter! Where minimalism loses me is the accompanying trend towards muted colors, flatness, and blank space at all costs. Every element of a design needs a purpose. Is grabbing attention not a purpose? Is character not a purpose? Is joy not a purpose?
This week, we’re rejecting the false dichotomy of minimalism and maximalism and getting inspired by glitter in its infinite forms — the Milky Way, the sun's reflection on the sea, outlandish generations of pink skies and unicorn waterfalls, literal glitter, and more. Join me as together we ponder the value of AI imagery, get inspired by this week’s soundtrack and moodboard, and learn how ideas are made.
✨ Moodboard of the week
The All That Glitters moodboard is cosmic, sparkly, and surreal. It’s excessive, it’s ridiculous, I want to move into it. Click the board, or the button below, to view the full board, and original images, on Pinterest.
🔍 Question of the week
“Where do you get ideas from — and are they hard to think of?”
Inspiration is one of the most unreliable parts of the design process. No two people get inspired the same way, no one system perfectly guarantees a good idea, and different methods can yield massively different — and equally great — results. This is also the process I most like to discuss with non-designers. Very few jobs don’t require some measure of creative problem-solving (which is all design really is!), and it’s a muscle we’d all do well to strengthen.
To answer your second question, they can be! Coming up with ideas has gotten easier the longer I do this, but some things — like logos — are always hard, and I suspect they always will be. Other things, like designing document layouts, have become second nature, but I still take every project as an opportunity to innovate.
The first question is much more complicated. The short answer is that I get ideas by keeping an open mind. I seek inspiration LITERALLY everywhere because you never know what will spark a winning concept. I came up with one of my favorite logos ever after watching the trailer for Prometheus, a movie I still have not seen and probably never will (way too scary, let’s be real).
That said, I do have some reliable go-to methods for coming up with ideas:
Verbal brainstorm
I like my designs to be very conceptual, so I always start by thinking. Usually, I’ll start with a free-write where I babble about the design and what it needs to communicate for as long as I can. I let any thoughts that pop up make their way to the paper, no matter how silly. I make long lists of relevant words and synonyms, in case any of them may be helpful in coming up with real ideas later, and I make huge free-association mind maps based on any starting word that feels relevant. While I ground this process in important communication points, at this stage there are no bad ideas. Sometimes the worst ideas lead to the best ones. I come back to this stage frequently throughout the process.Visual inspiration
My next step is visual inspiration. I find so much on Pinterest, Behance, and Dribbble, but I definitely don’t limit myself to those three. Sometimes the things I find inspiring are other designs, sometimes they’re just images that spark something in me. Later I’ll organize my inspiration by what best embodies the tone or ideas I’m going for, but in the beginning, I err on the side of quantity.Get started
Even if I don’t feel ready to develop concepts, I try to start creating as soon as possible. Even if the initial ideas aren’t great, they can give me something to work from. Ideas that don’t work will often spark better ones. This is also a great way to get bad ideas out of my head so they stop torturing me. When I don’t have a specific idea in my head, I’ll just sketch random things. You never know!Talk it out
When I’m feeling stuck, I find talking about the project extremely helpful. This isn’t so much about bouncing ideas around as it is about vocalizing what I need to do and seeing what comes out or seeing where the conversation leads. I try to talk to both designers and non-designers since both perspectives are helpful in different ways. If nobody is available to talk, sometimes I’ll just talk to my empty office since the process of explaining is often helpful in itself.Speed design
I’ll often give myself challenges like “come up with 50 ideas in an hour” or something more specific like “draw 12 concepts based on circles.” It’s usually an impossible task, and 95% of what I draw will be ridiculous, but it’s wild what will come out in the process of trying.Take a break
If trying to come up with good ideas isn’t yielding results, sometimes the right answer is to stop trying. I can’t even tell you how many good ideas I’ve come up with in the shower or while brushing my teeth. This is often the hardest thing to do (especially on a deadline) but making space for creativity to come through on its own time often yields the best results.Stay inspired
I make sure I surround myself with good design at all times so I come to a project with a base level of inspiration.Wait
No matter how long you brainstorm, how many times you brush your teeth, how many designs you look at, or how much time you spend drawing, sometimes the right idea just needs time to grow. For the most conceptual projects, I try to build as much time as possible into the first round (ideally, three weeks or a month) so that whatever the brain waves do to make good ideas happen, they have time to do it.
I often tell clients the story of my mom’s logo — an elegant “F” in the shape of a fig, one of my first big logo projects. I worked hard on concepts for a few weeks but wasn’t getting anywhere, so (because she’s my mom) I kept pushing it off. After a year of keeping it in the back of my mind, it just came to me and I completed the final design in about an hour. To this day, it’s one of my favorite designs I’ve done. Few projects have that luxury, but it was wild to see the effects of letting the wheels turn and letting the process flow at its own pace.
Submit your burning design questions by sending me a message below. Questions can relate to design itself, entrepreneurship, workflow, how to get the best work from your designers, opinions and hot takes, or anything you think I may be able to answer. There are no limits.
🎧 Soundtrack of the week
This week’s playlist is inspired by jewels, opulence, and the mysteries of the universe. Click to listen to the full thing on Spotify!
✏️ Design-spiration
I had a lot of fun this week playing around on Midjourney. I have a lot of VERY complicated feelings about AI art (most of them negative), but it’s enough of a force that I want to have an informed opinion about what its use may be, and how (or if) it can be used responsibly.
To me, this image, with its dubious roof lines, random shadows, wonky patterns, road to nowhere, floating… window? and undeniable air of whimsy embodies so much of what works and what doesn’t about AI art. There’s something genuinely wonderful about being able to create an image from nothing, and I can see it having amazing implications for clients who have very specific imagery needs that can actually be more responsibly met with generated imagery. On the other hand, it’s still next to impossible to generate an image — even a cartoon — that’s internally consistent, and it still leaves you wondering what this is based on, and whose original style isn’t getting credit.
Image generated using Midjourney, using the prompt “a cartoon 3D glittery castle scene,” upgraded twice, and zoomed out at 1.5x.
🌱 Touching Grass
📖 What I’m reading: I’m currently on book three, Heat Wave, of TJ Klune’s Extraordinaries series (think gay Spider-Man). The whole series is a hilarious, heartwarming, and gripping romp. ADHD is also not only an extremely prominent and well-handled theme but arguably its own character, and even though my ADHD is very different from main character Nick’s, it’s wonderful to see it discussed in such a responsible (and often relatable) way. I’ve also been listening to Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands on Libby and so far, it’s delightful.
🍲 What I’m eating: It may be getting warm out, but if I don’t eat sundubu-jjigae at least once a month I wilt, so what can you do? Maangchi’s recipe is easy and flawless. My sister Francesca has also sent me a one-pot hot pot recipe that I also can’t wait to try this week, especially since the sundubu-jjigae recipe makes extra stock which will adapt perfectly. You can find her recipe here.
📺 What I’m watching: I have a LOT of Bob’s Burgers to catch up on — which, let’s be honest, is the best way to watch it.
🎧 What I’m listening to: After a few months of schedule conflicts, I was finally able to make it back to a Gaia Music Collective One Day Choir in Brooklyn this weekend. Between the beautiful community and Matt Goldstein’s impossibly campy 5-part/17-page arrangement of It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, it was easily the most fun I’ve ever had singing. Suffice it to say that Céline Dion will live rent-free in my head all week.