Avoiding Design Depression

August 5, 2009 at 10:10 pm

Inspiration is a great thing. As web designers, we have free, instant, easy access to samples of work from other designers all around the world.

Which means inspiration can also be a problem.

When you’re working within a small group, such as in an office or classroom, it’s very easy to rank yourself among your colleagues. If you’re close to the top of your peers, you can clearly see whose talent outweighs your own. You can study those people and learn from them.

When you’re comparing your work with a larger group, such as the entire Internet, you have very little grasp on where your skills fit on the spectrum.

The problem I have is that a lot of the work I see seems light years ahead of my own. There are two possible reasons for this: I’m either a very below-average designer (quite possible), or I am setting an unfair standard for my work by focusing on some of the most talented designers in the industry.

Let me illustrate this problem with a scenario that might be familiar to you:

I’m working on a small project for a client; I’m probably 75% complete. After a string of frustrations (scope creep, lack of content, slow client response time), I decide to read a few blogs during a break. I see a gorgeous new site (usually designed by someone younger than me and/or sporting some terrible facial hair). I then obsess over the site for several minutes, digging into all the sections, noting how certain elements were handled. The next time I start working on my project again, I’m comparing my own work to the awesome site I just saw. This can often be depressing, as I’m often comparing a small locally-focused site to an international-level project that probably took months to complete.

So how can you avoid derailing your workflow when you see a shiny new object?

First, you could avoid looking at other sites altogether. The only problem is, you’d never learn anything new, and your work would stagnate.

Next, you could just force yourself to be happy with your work and never let anybody else’s designs get you down. Turns out, it’s really hard to change your emotional reactions.

So I think the only practical advice I can offer is this:

Don’t look for added inspiration when you’re in the middle of a project.

When you’ve committed yourself to a design, you need to keep moving forward. Getting distracted once a large chunk of work is already behind you is a quick way to miss a deadline and lose future work. The best option you have is to draw an imaginary line on your schedule and tell yourself to stop looking at other people’s work until your invoice is out the door.

Once you’re done with the project and have some downtime (or at least when you’re about to start on your next job), spend some time to catch up on your inspiration-hunting. The best time to brainstorm new ideas is when you actually have time to implement them.

Tags: inspiration

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