Anti-inspiration

For years, there have been gallery-type websites that track the "best of the best" in the web design industry and present them for us to enjoy and inspire. These sites include CSS Beauty, CSS Elite, CSS Vault, CSS Remix, unmatchedstyle, webcreme, and dozens others. If you're even remotely interested in web design, then you've probably seen them, scouring their archives for something cool.

The sad truth though, is that the two most common feelings remaining after visiting the gallery sites are - an increase in frustration, and a decrease in originality. I should disclaim that these are my own opinions, but from the many other designers that I've talked to regarding the subject, the more I'm finding that I'm not alone in these thoughts.

Frustration

So you've decided to visit a gallery site. Good for you. Welcome to all the impressive designs. Don't be fooled though, for this is faux-inspiration. The design industry is inherently very competitive. We constantly strive to become better than anyone else at what we do. It's in our nature, and it's unavoidable. This is because we enjoy what we do so much, that our work becomes personal.

Even as we support our peers in their efforts, we're looking for ways to make ourselves better in our own work. We critique to not only help someone else, but to place a stamp of our own expertise on an idea. This is felt initially as inspiration, because we start doing the "I can do that, but better!" thing. Don't let the gallery entries fool you though: Real inspiration should give us ideas that fuel new original work, rather than just improve on what others have already created.

The frustration begins to set in when you use other people's work as a bar from which to measure your own progress. Or worse: thinking that you suck because you don't get noticed by the gallery sites (a personal, and resolved admission). This causes your goals to change or become a little hazy. Fix this by re-affirming exactly what you intend to do and how you plan on getting it done.

Originality

Finding personal inspiration has always been a strong interest for me. My love of all things creative has me constantly watching out for things that give pause. Over the years, I've also noticed that the people who tend to create the most brilliant things, usually do so with a great amount of disconnect to the world around them. In the privacy of their own mind. Alone enough to let a single idea grow into its own entity.

In scientific research, when a test sample contains elements that alter the results of that test, it's considered to be contaminated, or impure. It's like this with creativity. You have innovators, and you have imitators. Sometimes the latter are jealous of the former for coming up with all the great ideas in the first place, not realizing that coming up with good ideas means to not contaminate the idea. It's a viscous circle, really.

The Cure

I've found that if you truly want to be inspired. Like, really inspired... get off the grid. Close down the email, the IM, the Twitter, and the Web. Set your desktop to something minimal, and do whatever you can to remove all the distractions that are under your control.

What you need to do is prevent yourself from making your next design look like a derivative of something that you saw on a gallery site recently. Throw some gasoline on that fire and do it your own way! If anything, get an idea started and keep updating revisions to that core concept until you get it right. Tweak the shit out of it. That's what I plan on doing, at any rate.