Where is your Original Design?
One of the most valuable assets you can accumulate as a designer is original high quality stock - drawings, vectors, textures and photography. I’d suggest if you’re not doing that early in your career then you’re significantly selling yourself short.
On the one hand you might keep a reservoir of your influences and secondary stock items you’ve used on previous jobs. That’s the morgue file. Don’t throw anything you’ve spent time accumulating or discovering out because that all becomes useful tomorrow. An economical necessity in business. Having lost a few gems through inadvertent clean-outs the pain of their absence has been with me.
This original works morgue file is significant in itself. Pick up your camera and just walk around the city taking shots you think might be useful. Shots of interesting people. Visit the botanical gardens or go somewhere interesting where people congregate. Take photos of posters, tram wheels and the eye of blue trevalley on the wharf. Just go for it regularly and think about what you’re trying to capture instead of just making happy snaps. Composition. Sometimes its the 100 year old writing off the wall that you actually use down the track and not the original composition.
The same applies to your drawings and vectors. Don’t just file everything in some ad hoc corner of the G Drive on Windows but try to create an organised collection of your work. Even the failures might get a corner in there somewhere. Try new ways of doing things, experiment with different art forms. What do you have to lose except time? As your career moves forward you will have a growing ability to pull work out of thin air.
