As in-house creatives, we sometimes struggle with finding creativity within the brand. Brandi Sea Heft-Kniffin, a creative director and design strategist, specializes in helping others take control of their creativity and unlock their inspiration. At the UCDA Design Conference in Tamaya, Brandi will share ways designers can be empowered with the tools they need to stay inspired and create work that gets noticed. We asked her a few questions about inspiration.
Brandi Sea Heft-Kniffin is a native New Mexican with 20+ years of experience as a graphic designer, art and creative director, and design and brand strategist. She helps creatives “discover uncommon inspiration” and produce more captivating design concepts. She believes that every designer deserves a process that will get them past a creative block. Through her podcast, Design Speaks, online course, YouTube channel, and blog, she works to empower designers with the tools they need to stay inspired and create work that gets noticed. She is currently serving as the vice president of the New Mexico chapter for AIGA. In her free time, you will likely find her traveling, collecting inspiration, reading classic literature, discovering new music, or spending time with her husband Kenny, a video producer, and her two kiddos Jasmine and Kaden.
Brandi is a main stage speaker at the upcoming UCDA Design Conference.
Is inspiration overrated?
Brandi Sea Heft-Kniffin is a native New Mexican with 20+ years of experience as a graphic designer, art and creative director, and design and brand strategist. She helps creatives “discover uncommon inspiration” and produce more captivating design concepts. She believes that every designer deserves a process that will get them past a creative block. Through her podcast, Design Speaks, online course, YouTube channel, and blog, she works to empower designers with the tools they need to stay inspired and create work that gets noticed. She is currently serving as the vice president of the New Mexico chapter for AIGA. In her free time, you will likely find her traveling, collecting inspiration, reading classic literature, discovering new music, or spending time with her husband Kenny, a video producer, and her two kiddos Jasmine and Kaden.
That’s an interesting question. I think it depends on how you think about inspiration. Let me explain. Creative professionals and often people, in general, think about inspiration as the Eureka moment, the bolts of lightning that strike us with genius, creative or otherwise, when we least expect it. Creatives become stuck and frustrated because when that bolt of lightning, doesn’t come, we feel like failures and imposter syndrome digs its talons deep. Inspiration can be overrated when it becomes the holy grail, the ultimate goal of creativity. Instead of actually doing the work of being creative, we rely on feeling creative. Artist Henri Matisse once said, “Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while working.” Inspiration shouldn’t lead the work; the work should lead to inspiration. I do believe inspiration can be overrated when it becomes more important than doing the work and having a process. You don’t have to wait for a bolt of lightning when you know how to make lightning happen, you can actually learn how to make your own lightning, with the right process and commitment to doing the work.
Where is the best place to start when looking for solutions if not on Pinterest?
Okay let me start with a disclaimer: Pinterest is an amazing place, and it is a great tool for looking at other creatives’ work. But I do think something people don’t realize is that it is not an ideal place to find style references for their designs. Designers often approach projects like this: “I need to find inspiration for an album cover”... immediately open up Pinterest...search for then pin a collection of album covers...put them together on a mood board...create from said mood board. This approach has so many drawbacks, one of which is the homogenization of design, watering down of a designer’s own creative voice, and often frankly, flat out ripping off other designers’ work. Inspiration, or what I call uncommon inspiration, is really everywhere. I know that probably sounds cliché because everyone knows inspiration is everywhere, right? The difference comes in how to look at said, “everything.” It is being prepared to seek and find inspiration. For example, if I am doing a branding project, and the concept that I have composed is “surprisingly sentimental,” because of the process I am following, I also know that some of the visuals that I’m going to need for my design include flower petals, pastels, and soft, organic shapes. So now, I can walk out into the world outside, visit a coffee shop, watch a movie or a TV show, or go to an art gallery, and I will be able to seek and be on the alert to find all of these things in these places. I can take photos and capture the flower petals near the sidewalk outside my house, capture the pastel paint colors in a painting at the museum, the soft typography in an alley that I see downtown and the pattern on the wallpaper in the coffee shop bathroom. I can be inspired by looking for the things that I actually need instead of just searching “album cover designs” on Pinterest. Using Pinterest—for lack of a better term—as an answer key to our design solutions feels like cheating. You aren’t doing the work of deep research or creating something that is your own, you are essentially looking over at your neighbor's paper to see what solution they got and copying what they did. Your design solutions should culminate in something true to your own voice and style because they grow from your own research and your own inspiration that is found in the uncommon places, places no one can copy.
Is burnout the opposite of inspiration and how do we avoid falling into those ruts?
I don’t necessarily think that burnout and inspiration are opposites, but I do think that it is very difficult to be inspired if you are creatively burnt out. Having processes in place really does make it a lot harder to become burnt out and makes it a lot easier to be inspired and act on that inspiration. When people are creatively burnt out, it’s because they aren’t managing their creative energies well or they don’t have processes that allow them to be creative when they actually need to be. Creating boundaries for ourselves allows us to use our time wisely and creates more opportunities to be creative when we need to. Understanding when we are at our best for various tasks, creative and not creative, helps our brains know where to allocate energy instead of trying to manage all the things at once. Implementing brain triggers and routines is a great way to avoid falling into ruts because it creates bridges over them, so we don't fall into ruts if we have a way over them. For example, I know that I need a clean desk, a specific playlist (depending on my task), and a lit candle in my office in order for my brain to know “it’s time to work.” I also know that I am prone to distraction and get drowsy after 2 p.m. so I save my more mundane, administrative tasks for those times. I sketch, do my ideating process, and design tasks in the morning and save research and things like formatting files for the afternoon. Burnout happens less when you understand how you best work and allow yourself to be in the mental spaces you need to be successful.
You say that inspiration should be led by process. Can you give an example?
Absolutely! As I’ve mentioned already, Pinterest-driven inspiration is not a reliable, repeatable, process that will help you consistently solve design problems. And even if it is working for you, this way of doing things makes it virtually impossible to be creative on demand or to tap into your own inspiration when you need it.
It’s the difference between being in the woods camping and not really knowing where the water is but knowing it’s out there somewhere and just searching and searching and searching until you find it kind of hoping that maybe lightning will strike, and a rainstorm will hit instead, and you can stop the hunt. It’s far better to have a map and a plan of where you will find water, or even better, have water bottles or coolers of water that you can just tap into whenever you need it. The right process gives you the plan so that you can find that water—that inspiration—when you actually need it. Leading with process allows you to create a plan; create a concept that begins with words instead of visuals and ideas. It gives you the foundation for your design where you are given the first step which leads to the next step which eventually leads to you creating an amazing design.
If I waited until I felt like going for a run then I would rarely go, because I rarely feel like running. I have to put habits and processes in place to make sure that I go and run whether I am feeling like running or not. When the process comes first, the inspiration will come and if it doesn't, you will have a way to access it.
How important is collaboration to inspiration?
Collaboration is hugely inspiring. Especially in a situation where multiple creatives are working towards the same goal, tapping into other creative minds together can really be quite magical. For extroverts like me, leading a creative team in finding design solutions is one of the greatest joys of my job. As a creative director, not only is it my job to direct The Creative, but it is my job to direct creatives and to help them grow individually and as a group or a team. Much like a band’s members might riff off of each other while playing at a concert, creative collaboration in design feels very much the same. One idea leads to another which connects to something else which brings about new and interesting design solutions that may not have happened if not for the creative collaboration of all those different brains. Design is the art of connection and communication. We connect the abstract to the literal, the everyday to the extraordinary, we communicate using color and type and form and photography and connect people to ideas. Learning how to collaborate in pursuit of inspiration is important because it allows us to see other points of view and understand how others think and see the world. This is one reason I love watching documentaries, it gives me a peek into the mind and world of someone else and that is hugely inspiring to me. Collaboration is something I think designers need to seek out more often because it shows us that we are not the only ones with good ideas and often two people collaborating will create something far richer, deeper, and effective than what either of them might have created alone.
What are you most looking forward to at the conference?
My favorite part of any presentation or keynote I’ve ever been a part of is always the Q&A. I’m really looking forward to being able to encourage design professionals and hopefully open their eyes to something new and interesting ways of approaching design and their own inspiration and creativity. I love hearing from designers and helping them navigate the creative roadblocks that they may have.
You love documentaries. What one documentary would you recommend to fellow designers?
Ouch, ONE documentary…. Wow that’s really hard. Okay, if I have to choose one documentary, I’m going to cheat and say a documentary series available on Netflix called, Abstract, The Art of Design. There are two seasons as of now, and the show explores the minds of “innovative designers” from toy design to illustration, from stage design to type design and many more. It’s a study in appreciating and understanding various design disciplines and showing the impact these varied types of design and design in general impacts our lives every day. Honorable mentions: Helvetica, Sign Painters, Art&Copy, Design is One, Iris, The Creative Brain, and Inside Pixar.
What is the one thing our attendees should know about New Mexico before getting to Tamaya?
When you go to a restaurant anywhere in New Mexico, remember it’s not “green or red chiles” or “red and green sauce.” It’s green chile and red chile. If you want to try both chiles you want it “Christmas.” Trust me on this, you’ll thank me later. 😉