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In the innovative world of design, designers are pushing the limit and inspiring the design trends of the future. However, it takes many rounds of trial and error for designers to get even close to breaking new grounds in design.

As a result, designers often expend their creativity to the point where their brains are in serious need of some R&R.

The following are some ways to avoiding design burnout and keeping your creative sanity!

If you need more tips and inspiration on avoiding burnout and keeping your creative juices flowing, here are other articles you should read:

• How to Create Creativity
• Destroying Designer’s Creative Block and Unleashing Your Creativity
• How to Stay Ahead of the Curve as a Designer
• 10 Unusual Places to Get Design Inspiration
• 6 Reasons Why You Should Do Personal Design Projects

Take Care of Your Health

A topic which should rank top on your list of concerns is mental or physical exhaustion. They can be a clear sign that you need to take better care of your health.

A typical designer’s life may consist of long hours in front of the computer, little sleep, and sugary drinks that eventually lead to crashing. And as cliché as it sounds, eating a balanced diet will revitalize your creative capabilities.

Exercise

Exercise gives us the chance to get away from the computer and wake up our body’s energy. Exercise can be a better alternative to early morning caffeinated drinks by jump-starting your energy and getting the blood circulating.

Long hours sitting in front of the computer prohibit proper circulation throughout your body, which stifle the functionality of vital organs.

Notice your butt getting a little numb? Stand up and take a brief walk around the block, house, or office. Allow this moment to give you some time to clear your mind, and your body will repay you with a little mental clarity.

The other awesome benefit of exercise is the endorphins. Exercising helps to release endorphins, which greatly alleviate stress. They even bring a smile back to your face by uplifting your mood for a better attitude towards your work.

Don’t Design

Step away from the graphics tablet! If you’re a designer that eats, drinks, and sleeps design, you may want to dictate a day each week where you simply don’t design. I know, it sounds a little hard at first, but the payoff is incredibly rewarding.

Turn off your creative brain temporarily each week. Respond to emails in the morning, then shut off the computer to enjoy the day to yourself or with loved ones. Everyone deserves and requires at least a day off for mental clarity, and though the pressure of maintain clientele may hold favoritism, no client is worth your sanity.

Get a New Hobby

One way to keep your mind off design is to take up a hobby completely unrelated to it. The summer weather is especially inviting to the wide array of activities you can explore.

You can even kill two birds with one stone by picking a hobby that allows you to get out and exercise. One thing that I’ve always loved to do is to take a book and go to a beautiful park or place near the water and read for a couple of hours.

Experience Something New

Take a note from the recent MTV show where a group of guys made a list of things they want to do before they die. Make a top 100 bucket list of all the things you would like to accomplish within a given amount of time and make an effort this year to start on some of those endeavors.

My list consists of experiences that greatly appeal to my background and culture. For instance, I’m making a personal effort to begin learning the Spanish language this year and currently making great progress.

Find a Mentor

Are you feeling a little hopeless as to where you should turn for great support and advice? Well, approach a respected designer with the concept of potential mentorship.

Mentorships don’t require a lot of time out of your schedule, and they open a world of possibilities for design inspiration.

Set up a friendly agreement with your mentor to have access to their advice on new projects and resources for the tips and techniques they call upon to avoid burnout. You may even collaborate on future projects and learn from the pros with first-hand experience. And with the convenience of modern day social networking, great advice is just a tweet away.

Buena Suerte! (Good Luck)

Learning techniques to avoid design burnout is important to your life as a designer. Enjoy the abundance of mental clarity you’ll absorb by taking time out for yourself and interests.

Though this field is incredibly rewarding, it’s also quite tiring at times, so show yourself the appreciation for all your hard work by taking care of yourself.

What are your own tips, tricks, and favorite resources for combating design burnout? What causes design burnout?

Related Content

• Great Designers Are Spawned From Mediocrity
• Five Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Expand Your Design Business
• How to Create Creativity
• Related categories: Creativity and Project Management

About the Author

Melody Nieves is a friendly, flirty, and eccentric digital artist and marketing enthusiast. Read her titillatingly intellectual posts on the influence of sex in marketing and design at SexiDesign. You can also find her rockin’ it out at her more personal blog, AWalkInMyShoes. Check her out on Twitter as well.

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Some people are just geniuses when it comes to design. They’re the "Albert Einsteins" of the industry, often forcing you to *facepalm* for the insane brilliance of their concepts and techniques.

In fact, their artistic ability appears so naturally, as if they emerged from their mother’s womb with a graphics tablet already in hand.

Did I mention I hate (hate is such a strong word, more like envy) those people?

We All Start From the Bottom

No matter what our artistic skill level is at the time we become a designer, we all start at our lowest. And the only point at which we finally realize this is when time has passed and we see visible improvement.

As a digital artist, I often hear feedback from other artists who are insecure about their current skill level. And though as discouraging as it may initially be to push forward, I can assure you that the payoff is incredibly rewarding.

My Bout with Mediocrity

This was my first digital painting back in 2007. It’s okay, you can laugh it up.

I made the painting in Corel Paint Shop Pro with an obvious misunderstanding of building layers for volume and intensity. I can now look back on this first attempt and continue to learn from my mistakes, even today.

Digital paintings require time, patience and persistence to continue working on areas you just know aren’t right. At the time, I didn’t understand the significance of painting in layers, and frustrations peaked when it seemed impossible to master quickly.

But as an artist or designer, when you’ve discovered a style that piques your interest, you take on the inevitable journey to continuous growth. View my own progression as an artist from the age of 5 to 20 years old.

Reemerge Into the Design World as a Butterfly

The only way to unsheathe your potential for artistic genius is by embracing growth. Envelope yourself in a cocoon of knowledge and get ready for your talents to blossom.

The following are tips for bringing out the talent within you.

Stick to One Style

You don’t have to be a jack-of-all-trades — it’s exhausting.

Take the time to perfect the style and technique of your choice, leaving room for future branding potential.

Enroll in at Least One Design/Drawing Class

Designers all over the world have proven that it’s not necessary to have a degree in design to be successful.

However, whether you realize it or not, your work exhibits common design principles and understanding these principles is important to functional designs that make sense.

For years, I tried to read every drawing book I could find, but it wasn’t until a drawing professor showed me what I was doing wrong that I was able to jump over my plateau. Something inside me just "clicked".

Once you have your "aha" moment, feel free to scour the unlimited resources on and offline to further your wealth of knowledge.

Switch It Up!

Is the current style, technique, or medium you utilize beginning to bore you to death?

Well, try something new! It didn’t take long before I joined "the occult of Adobe," armed with a pen tablet in hand and ready to embark on the fantasies within my mind.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Take a sketchbook and draw what you see. Create sketched observations of light and shadow. Play with perspective until it starts playing with you — just practice! After all, a person doesn’t just wake up and become an Olympian gold medalist overnight.

Enjoying the Fruits of Your Labor

Two years after my original digital painting faux pas, I recreated an acrylic painting from my teen years in Photoshop.

This moment would soon become an enlightening point in my life where I finally realized my potential.

And though I will forever consider myself as an artist on a never-ending path of knowledge and growth, it’s important to stop and embrace those powerful moments of reflection.

Go Ahead, Pat Yourself on the Back!

No need to be shy, take a moment to reflect upon your progress. Reward yourself with a simple acknowledgment of improving from where you once were.

No matter what the road is ahead of you, all that matters right now is this moment.

More Articles on Becoming a Great Designer

Check out these other articles on creativity to help you embrace growth.

• How to Create Creativity
• How to Design for Your Worst Client: You.
• Inspirational Tips and Tools from a Designer
• 10 Things Every Web Designer Just Starting Out Should Know
• Destroying Designer’s Creative Block and Unleashing Your Creativity
• Why You Should Do Personal Design Projects
• Unusual Places to Get Design Inspiration

Related Content

• Feedback. The Creativity Killer.
• 6 Reasons Why You Should Do Personal Design Projects
• How to Stay Ahead of the Curve as a Designer
• Related categories: Graphic Design and Project Management

About the Author

Melody Nieves is a friendly, flirty, and eccentric digital artist and marketing enthusiast. Read her titillatingly intellectual posts on the influence of sex in marketing and design at SexiDesign. You can also find her rockin’ it out at her more personal blog, AWalkInMyShoes. Check her out on Twitter as well.

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‘Creative’ is the most popular adjective in the design world. Everybody wants to be a creative individual, find a creative solution, or discover a creative book. There are many synonyms for the word ‘creative’: ingenious, clever, prolific, innovative, gifted, inspired, inventive, original, stimulating. But what does this word really mean? And how can we activate our own creativity?

The Latin word creatio was originally applied solely to deeds of God. Only later, in The Renaissance Period – when man first recognized his own ability to create something new into existence – the word creativity became used for describing human accomplishments.

Creativity is a mental and social process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts. It is the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new that has a value – be it a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object, form or idea. Either way, the end result of creative thought is both original and useful.

A number of personality traits have been shown to be associated with creative productivity. A high degree of self-confidence is a basic need for an individual that aims to create something new, so is unconventional thought and curiosity. In order to practice creativity, one must be a master of his particular domain, while also having the autonomy to explore and the flexibility to step outside of the box.

However, having the right characteristics and even the most inspiring work conditions doesn’t guarantee a creative result. Creativity techniques are thought processes or methods used to generate divergent thinking – a form of thinking which aims to produce many different ideas in a short period of time. Creativity techniques are used to release the creativity out of our brains and put it into a practical solution. Let’s imagine them as "output techniques".

Three well-known techniques for igniting creativity:

Brainstorming

A term invented by Alex Osborn, and first used in his book "Applied Imagination"–Brainstorming works best in small groups of people, but can also be done individually.

The Brainstorming process starts off with the problem clearly stated and recognized by all participants. One person out of the group is chosen to write down all the ideas that are suggested in order to make them simultaneously visible to all others.

The Brainstormers suggest solution to the problem, starting from very obvious answers, and often going to the extreme.

Criticizing suggested solutions is not allowed. Every idea is accepted and written down.

Participants are to build on and develop each others’ ideas.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, an American artist and the first painter of African descent to become an international art star, depicted his own identity struggle using various symbols from Haitian, Puerto Rican and African American cultures in a brainstorming manner. Staring from simple elements – colors, shapes – later adding the more developed ones followed with words and lines connecting them.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking is a creative technique that encourages reasoning that is not immediately obvious, and ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. It is about finding a solution to problems through an indirect approach.

Edward de Bono, who coined the term Lateral Thinking (acknowledged in the Oxford English Dictionary) is regarded by many as the leading authority in the field of creative thinking, innovation and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. De Bono claims that it is important to disrupt the conventional patterns adopted by the brain. In notes from definition on Lateral Thinking, De Bono states: "Lateral Thinking is used for changing concepts and perceptions instead of trying harder with the same concepts and perceptions".

To demonstrate this form of thinking, take for example a simple problem like opening a door. Now think of some new solution except the doorknob. This forces you to think about creative solutions that are close to or the extreme opposite of a doorknob. It promotes thinking outside of the box.

Albert Einstein, whose name is a synonym for genius of originality and creativity, once said: "The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place". It is obvious that Einstein had used lateral thinking to go around existing paradigms. He used Lateral Thinking in coming up with his theories to explain the physics world to us.

Problem Reversal

In his book "What a Great Idea", Charles Thompson suggested that the only way to truly understand this world is to learn from positives as well as from negatives. Ying-Yang, Summer-Winter, Day-Night are just some examples of that.

Problem reversal method is based on stating the problem in reverse. Change a positive statement into a negative one. Next, try to define what something is not, change the direction or location of your perspective. This will give you the opportunity to look at your problem from radically different point of view, which might lead to completely new and unexpected practical solutions.

Rene Magritte, a famous Belgian surrealist painted this picture that shows a smoking pipe.

Below it, Magritte wrote – "Ceci n’est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe). By explicitly stating that this is not a pipe, Magritte tricks the observer into posing a question to themselves: if it’s not a pipe, what is it actually?

Naturally, the answer comes: it is a painting. Magritte used the problem reversal technique to emphasize the real subject of his work: a painting, rather than what that painting is supposed to represent.

Conclusion

Sir Ken Robinson, a 20th century thinker in the development of innovation and human resources, claims that by the time kids became adults, most have lost their capacity to be creative; they have become frightened to be wrong – they get educated out of creativity.

Why does this happen? Is there a downside to being creative?

Encouraging creativity means encouraging departure from society’s existing norms and values.  Creativity’s main goal is to question old ways and to find new and better ones, which is not always fitting to the world we live in. Conformity and creativity run in separate directions.

People working in the Creative industry know very good how big of a fight that is. However, don’t let it beat you, keep strong and keep demanding your freedom. Arrange your environments so that they encourage freethinking. Expand your mind and give it lots of input. Apply "output techniques" and let it all out.

Creativity is waiting to be awakened, enjoy it!

Sources

• Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
• The World Centre for New Thinking
• Mind Tools
• Techniques for Creative Thinking
• creativity — Britannica Online Encyclopedia
• The de Bono Group

Image credits

• The Vitruvian Man
• Brooklyn Museum: Exhibitions: Basquiat
• scifair.org
• My Free Wallpapers – Magritte – Pipe

Related Content

• Feedback. The Creativity Killer.
• 6 Reasons Why You Should Do Personal Design Projects
• A Designer’s List of New Year’s Resolutions
• Related categories: Graphics Design and Project Management

About the Author

Martina Skender is a freelance graphic designer and illustrator from Croatia. She works for theater, print and web. She likes to observe, write, draw and post her drawings on her draw everything blog. You can take a took at here portfolio at mskender.info, follow her on Twitter @semiblancaand send her a note.