Ruts

How do you stay out of them or in my case, how do you get out of them.

I am finding myself doing the same things over and over in designs. It doesn't help that we have a rail column almost everyday. There are times when I walk in and I don't even have to look at what we have for art and I know exactly how the layout will look.

 

I try and find an advance project to work on. All too often we get caught up in the assemble line design because we have to hammer through too many pages in a given workday and there is little room for creativity when you have to design three section fronts. I find that when you get those creative muscles working, they tend to multiply. I would talk to a department head and see if you can get something to do in advance, work through some designs to get the thought proceses working and climb yourself out of that rut. Confidence is a big thing in this business and until you hammer out a great looking page, you kind of start to doubt yourself and shy away from taking chances on deadline.

 

Sometimes its hard to get out of doing the same things over and over (especially during summer).

What works for me is taking a step back and doing something else for a bit before going back to that page. When you do go back to the page, try and think of other ways to set it up. You could always look at your paper's archives for some advice.

Sometimes, though, you do the same things over and over because those are the only things that work.

 

I try a lot of things to stay out of ruts, even though I was sorta falling into one before this week. Mainly, I look everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, for ideas, things that I can take and use. Not duplicate, but maybe a way a pull quote is done, or a way color is used with a package. I use design magazines, newspagedesigner.com and sportsdesigner.com for inspiration, but I also use a lot of magazines to get ideas (Some of the best design out there is being done in magazines, some with crappy writing). I've gotten ideas off billboards, advertisements, about anywhere. Sometimes, the stuff has to be tamed down to use on a sports page in a newspaper, but you can get some awesome ideas to use as jumping off points. You can take a basic idea from something and go 20 different ways with it a lot of the time. Hell, sometimes I've gotten inspiration for typography from a fast food cup.

Also, often the best ideas just come from reading the stories. I had one today that I thought was going to be a bear to illustrate, but I ended up with a damn fine package (I wish the rest of the page had turned out so well). Another one a few months back, I read the story, and the first few graphs had some freat stuff that jumped out. I used that to come up with a great page.

And if all else fails, I second the idea of stepping away. Get out of the office if you can. Get some fresh air, see what inspires you.

 

What the hell is going on a round here? Fucking spambots. Be more fun if they actually spoke English.