Getting Inspiration from Art and the Outdoors

Written by Ethan Gardner Web Design

To keep creative work from becoming homogenized, it is important to have discovery and research as part of the design process for each project. Generating fresh ideas can be challenging when you design all day, but as designers, we need to keep innovating to overcome the client’s marketing challenges.

For many people the first and only stop for design ideas are CSS galleries, but stepping outside the norm can deliver unique and original design results. In this post, we’ll look at how art and life experience can be adapted to produce two unique web design elements with a nature theme.

Working with Art as Inspiration

Art is the proverbial “road less traveled” compared to CSS Design galleries that are commonly used by designers. For some, it might be hard to translate a loosely structured piece of art into a polished design, but using art is an exercise to develop a new way of thinking and add another technique to your arsenal.

How Art Can Be Translated to Web Design

Artists are masters at directing attention to the intended subject, and you should take advantage of their understanding of composition by thinking about how similar techniques might be applied on the web. In web design, the intended subject is the call-to-action, which conveys the purpose of the page. The call-to-action is usually a registration button, contact button, or the add to cart and checkout buttons of an E-commerce site.

The following chiaroscuro painting by Gerrit Van Honthorst uses a high amount of contrast between light and dark areas. The light source and the vivid colors of the woman in blue make her the focal point, even though she is in the background of the painting.

In order to translate this technique to a web element, a color photo was converted to black and white and adjusted to achieve high contrast. A blur was applied to the trees and carefully masked, while selective color helps draw the viewer’s eye to the bright orange button, despite the text “Save the planet” being much set in larger type.

Four Tips for Working with Art

Do Your Homework on the Client

Designing is visual communication, and if you don’t ask the right questions, you’ll never know what the client wants to communicate to their customers. Feedback from the client should be the fuel for making design decisions based on the type of inspiration you choose.

Choose Appropriate Works

Relate the mood of a piece to the client’s desired look and choose works that are appropriate to their brand. The best part about art there is something to suit every taste from conservative, classic, and elegant to edgy, bold, and sheik.

Look at Different Mediums and Sources

Evaluating different forms of art will help you to develop your own style. Don’t limit yourself to one style, artist, or media. Be diverse. Paintings, photography, sculpture, fashion, cinematography, tattoos and music can get the creative juices flowing.

Keeping it Organized

Organizing your inspiration is the key to working efficiently. For me, delicious is the hub for all my bookmarks, including inspiration. In order to quickly browse through the bookmarks, I created a Yahoo Pipe to make thumbnails of links based on the thumbnail your delicious links pipe.

Do Something to Ignite Passion

Staring at a screen can take its toll and we all need a break from time to time. Yes, I am suggesting that you get away from the computer and do something memorable. You do have hobbies and interests away from the computer, right?

How Life Experience Can Be Translated to Web Design

The skillset of a designer is pretty standard. On the other hand, life experiences and personal interests are completely individualized and can be used to set your work apart. For me, fishing in a stream somewhere, playing music, or experiencing other cultures through travel ignites a passion and gives me the energy to do my best work.

How Personal Experience Can Be Translated to Web Design

I have a profound interest in the outdoors, adventure travel, and conservation. While at the the Cincinnati Zoo, I stopped by the Mexican Wolf exhibit, one of my favorite animals at the zoo, to take a picture.

When I took the picture, I was about 8-feet away from these wonderful animals and had been observing them for 20 minutes. I used this experience to design another “save the planet’ banner. I kept the wolf in the illustration to further illustrate the theme and to stay true to my experience.

Conclusion

As you can tell from the two examples produced as part of this post, the type of inspiration we seek as designers can greatly influence the outcome the final product. Supplementing inspiration gained from design galleries with art, life experience, and nature can help refine ideas into something unique and original. While it can be more challenging to translate abstract ideas into web design, it is always worth the extra effort to design something that you are proud of and will help your client achieve their goals.