How does we interact with design references
Collecting and finding good design references always been challenging to me. My design fellows seems to do so much better than me. They are able to look at random reference and find there solution for the design problem they are facing.
The interaction with design references also been a bit ambiguous. We call it ‘taking inspiration’ or ‘we don’t copy, we do a version of ourselves’, or ‘I just taking a small bite from here’. Still it feel like we have hard time thinking of something completely unique by ourselves.
In this post i’m trying to ask myself open ended questions that might reveal the way I look for and use references, understand what i’m looking for, deciding when do I use references and when I’m trying to come up with something that is completely unique, and how do I able to share ideas as designer.
- What makes a good reference?
- When finding references, do I ask myself what I look for?
- What resources I use to find references?
- Do references are only visuals? or it can be textual as well? Are there others like a voice? A smell? A feeling? or even an historical monument?
- What am I taking from the reference? what exactly made it interesting to me?
- What caught me in one reference compare to others?
- Before diving for finding references, is there anything coming as instinct? Something that feels right without looking outside for confirmation?
- How can I reinvent ideas when I see idea that already been made?
- Do I have a common ground for the design i’m trying to solve?
- Do I really understand what direction I wish to take it? Or do I just looking out to find something that can ignite a direction?
- What is the difference between a reference to an inspiration?
- When I let my imagination lead versus when I let references leading me?
- Why we are so drawn up to find a reference, a good one? what about bad references?
- How long do I spend looking for inspiration or reference?
- What is the timeframe I got to invent and come up with a unique solution?
In the past, at 11 years old, when I just started designing 3d logos in Photoshop, design references were barely a thing for me. I had something in mind that felt to be good and I would just tried to craft it from imagination. It felt original, like the inspiration is within.
- When looking back to history, does painters and artists used references and inspirations as we do today?
- What was the way to ignite ideas?
- How does developing a direction look like?
- How does iterations look like?
We have access to so many references on Pinterest, Dribbble, Awwwards, Behance, etc. that I just feel ambigous about our originality.
Do we really trying to invent, to come up with the different? Thanks to systematic approaches we’ve become attached to guidelines, material design, apple design system, that we barely open our mind to come up with ideas that are completely unique and original.
