When you start brainstorming ideas for designs there are bound to be some that are stronger than others. When I get a prompt or a request, I immediately start brainstorming in my head, and sometimes I may even think I know what the finished design will look like.
Once the formal brainstorming process starts, however, and I’m actually able to put pen to paper, the process always goes a little different than I envision.
I start with finding art inspiration. Looking at art that has come before where people successfully achieved a goal I might be trying to tackle is incredibly helpful and makes ideas flow easier. The way I go about how to find art inspiration is looking at websites such as Behance or looking at historical art in a style I might be trying to mimic. All of these different inspirations lead me to sketching my own ideas out. For this we will use my poster based around the idea that Artificial Intelligence is killing artists.
Sketching doesn’t need to be anything formal, especially if they aren’t going to be seen by anyone else. If they do need to be sent out you can always refine the best ones later. The main idea here is to just communicate as many ideas you have in your head onto the page.
Next step is refining the best sketches. Figuring out which ones work best for your goal, then picking the best from those, narrowing the design even more. The goal here is to make functional drafts that you can send to the client where they can guide your next steps. They will tell you the ideas they like and don’t like. Sometimes they might not even fully know what they want but they can usually set you in a better direction.
The final step is taking the draft that the client picked and refining it. Using suggestions they might have, and your own ideas for refining it, you can make the best possible outcome for the final product.
The initial ideas I had for this example poster are radically different than the final. I am immensely proud of this piece and in part that’s because of all the brainstorming I did in the beginning. I believe that the initial brainstorming, just getting as many thoughts down on paper as possible, is the most important step. You never know what you might come up with in the end.