Graphic designers are a form of artist and like all artists they sometimes find themselves facing artist block. This might be due to different reasons such as the fear of the blank page, not sure what kind of project to work on, or just don’t know what to create in general. In this post I will discuss some of my sources for inspiration when I find myself faced against one of these challenges.

When it comes to the fear of the blank page, afraid of wasting material on something that won’t turn out good, this has a simple buy perhaps difficult solution. For those creating digital work this probably won’t affect you considering the ability to save, undo, copy, and so on. This one greatly affects those who are working with physical materials Depending on what you are working on their might be different approaches on how to overcome the fear. In a drawing class I took in college the best piece of advice my professor gave me when dealing with this challenge is to either wrinkle the paper a little or make a quick mark on the page. With this done you no longer become concerned with whether the piece will turn out a masterpiece or not because its already been altered. From here you should be able to progress on your project and will most likely also be able to correct the mark or wrinkled you created in the beginning.

Although you might be past the fear of the blank page, you still might not be sure what you want to create yet. The best way to find inspiration is to look at other peoples work until you either come up with your own idea for a project or you find something new you’d like to try. One of the first places I check is the (r/Design) subreddit from Reddit. This subreddit features several kinds of graphic design work from both professionals and amateurs. I never fail to find a new project when I browse r/Design. For those who don’t use reddit you can also try is Pinterest. Unlike r/Design, Pinterest can be customized in order for you to filter out what you’re not interested in. If you want to find inspiration for typography but don’t want to look at logo design all you’d need to do is filter results to typography and you won’t be distracted by anything else.

While Reddit and Pinterest help you come up with new design ideas another great way is to find a community with similar interests as you. With a community you can bounce ideas off each other as well as ask for help when you might need it. r/Design has the capability to comment and message people and could be a start to finding a design community to help you build your skills and graphic design portfolio.