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Design Creativity Exercises

Unleash your imagination and break creative blocks. Get tips and tricks to develop graphic design ideas and get inspired.

Photographic Meditations on Color and Shape

A collection of photographs that explore color and shape.

Ways to Kickstart Your Creativity

Stuck for an idea? Don't know where to start? Kickstart your brain and your desktop publishing projects with creative thinking, books, creativity exercises, sketches, and templates.

Books on Design Creativity and Finding Graphic Design Inspiration

Where do you get ideas? Where do you find inspiration? Whether you come up with your design ideas by looking at the work of others, studying how other designers approach the design process, or by looking at pictures or the world around you, one of these books is sure to provide just the right type of brainstorming and creativity boost you need.

5 Creative Thinking Steps to Generate Design and Business Ideas

We all have some level of creativity within us. As with other activities, you can teach yourself to engage in more creative thinking. Sometimes creativity requires us to look at things from new perspectives. Learn to unleash your inventive genius by thinking backwards. Here is an appropriate acronym containing five steps to creative thinking -- S A E D I -- that's IDEAS backwards

Brainstorm Bungy for Windows

Want a little software help to get the creative juices flowing? Use Brainstorm Bungy for group brainstorming. It provides a simple, fun, and flexible means of recording a group's ideas and then evaluating them against agreed and weighted criteria. Trial version available.

Creative Breath

Ideas just not coming? Take a deep breath... Enchanted Mind has breathing exercises to help you clear your mind then fill your mind.

Creative concept - a method

Carole Guevin describes a method of going from blank page to creative concept.

Creative Illusion

You can't always trust your eyes as these examples at Enchanted Mind illustrate.

Creative Tools and Techniques

Enchanted Mind discusses techniques such as creative mathematics, creative illusions, creative chess, and the art of doodling.

Don't kid yourself

Have you developed your own signature style or has your work just become repetitive, boring?

Doodle Exercises

Start with a scribble. JPB Creative illustrates the "fine art" of doodling. See where it can take you.

Fighting Burnout

When burnout threatens to delay a project, turn to these 20 ways to find inspiration. From Ozonline.

Garden of Creativity

At Eyewire find inspiring words from Napoleon, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others.

Hitting the Wall

At Creative Latitude William Johnston encourages designers to overcome career stalls, creative blocks.

Idea Workout Gym

Engage your brain at the Innovation Network. Mouse around for quick tips and advice.

Ideas! A closer look at creativity

Carole Guevin tells designers how to become better at generating ideas.

More Brain, Less Storm

Michael Flanagan tells us How to think creatively about thinking creatively.

Right vs. Left Brain

See which side of your brain processes and recognizes faces, numbers, time, and creativity. From Encyclopedia of Educational Technology.

Studies in Genius: M.C. Escher

Enchanted Mind says his work is "a perfect example of living creativity in pictoral form."

The Art of Doodling

Artist or not, you can "nurture the creative process" by doodling. From Enchanted Mind.

The Projector

Use your imagination and learn how pressure (vs. tension) can help you complete the project.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Brainstorming

It takes more than just "thinking about it." Learn how to brainstorm effectively at JPB Creative.

Whatagreatidea.com

Stuck? Think opposites. Shake the tree. Ask questions. Try out some of the inspiring ideas at this site.

Where Do You Find Inspiration?

At Poynter Online Anne Conneen lists some ways she finds inspiration from old photos and postcards to clocks, books, and Web sites.

White Page Syndrome

This editorial at Whiskey Creek Document Design explores the ways that both writers and designer's can overcome "creative block" to get started on a project.
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