Ravi Vora

Need a kick-start to your creative process? While the other guy might be steaming and frustrated with a creative block, you can take charge and use some of these easy and effective tips to super-charge your imagination.

1. Go take some pictures. No, not of your dog or your friends at a party, but of things you don’t normally take pictures of. Try shooting different angles you normally wouldn’t. Hold the camera upside-down or if you’re able to change the focus of your camera manually, try shooting things completely out of focus. The main objective here is to see things in a new light and finding simple beauty. Here are a bunch of examples in my own work when I did this.

2. Squiggle. Yeah, you heard me. Squiggle. This is a fun and easy game to play with yourself or a friend anywhere as long as you have a pen or pencil and something to write on (I dare you to find something fun to write on). The first person draws a squiggle — a random line going in any direction, just let it free flow, without picking up his or her pencil. Then, the second person uses the base line, without changing it, to draw a picture. Whatever comes to your head just draw, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be imaginative.

3. Look at magazines. Now this is easy and something you’re already likely to do. Instead of just reading the latest gossip column about Victoria Beckham’s controversial chest, take a look at the ads and the layout of the magazine, some kind of thought went into the design of all of it. I like to go to the book store and read Advertising magazines (however backwards that may sound) to see the best creative minds out there working for big corporations. There, you not only see what is trendy in art but also how messaging and ideas can be conceived, developed, and delivered. Take a look at Archive or Communication Arts.

4. Go back to see the future. As most great creatives will tell you, history repeats itself. Design has never really gone anywhere new but just taken different elements and tweaked them to fit whatever deliverable package they happen to be on. So take a look at some old photos of classic cars, watch a movie from the 50s, go to your local museum, or rummage through your grandmother’s closet (on second thought, scratch that). I know you’ve seen fashion come back through time, but some of it needs to die and stay dead (yes, I’m talking to you The 80s). It’s important to look back at what creatives thought in the past because a lot of the same principles apply to today. Take a look at some of the great artists like Salvador Dali or Monet.

5. Do nothing. I know it sounds counterintuitive but stay with me. Take a breather, go relax, have some nothing time set aside every day. As soon as you do nothing and stop worrying about things your mind will jump to ideas that have been waiting in the wings for you to just acknowledge them. That’s why when you’re in the shower ideas just come to you. You’ve already got the idea, you just have to let it out.

7. Play. Go outside. Do something creatively unfocused. Try actively doing something that is completely unrelated to anything you have to work on. Have some fun, shoot the breeze about movies, do whatever you want. Just make sure you’re interacting and not mindlessly oozing in front of the television. Try some creative outlets online like Mr. Picasso Head.

The most important thing is just to get your brain flowing together with your thoughts. Being distracted by worries and negative things isn’t going to help. Just relax, do something you love, and you’ll be flowing with creativity in no time.