creativity, INSPIRATION, innovation, and Where Ideas Come From Part 3

It’s difficult for me to think about inspiration without also considering motivation. Are they related in some way? I see a movie set in a beautiful location. The film also has a message that resonates with me and now I’m inspired/motivated to travel to this beautiful location so I can see it first hand. I’m thinking about the tourist boom in New Zealand as the Lord of the Rings movies were released. Never mind there was a load of CGI used in those films.

So in my example above, there is a personal connection that inspires me to travel to a specific locale. But is that what happens when we write drill or visually design? Do we see a piece of art or hear a piece of music that inspires us to create?

For me, I am a visual designer/I write drill because I honestly love the work and people pay me to do that work. There is my motivation. Inspiration is something I use to complete the work. The composition, feel, look, etc. of the work will have inspiration or inspirations behind it. Deadlines are also a real motivator for me. “When do I need to have that opener to High School X?”

Let me explain. In my blog entry Getting Organized (May 20, 2019), I shared how I use Google searches to put together what I call a “Shape Library”. Many times during that process, I’ll find something that I can’t necessarily use (in a literal sense) in the design. But I may be inspired by a particular attribute of the item. For instance, Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night.

I probably won’t have the opportunity to stage a band (although that would be AWESOME!) in such a way as to recreate the entire painting. However, I could draw inspiration from those swirls in the center of the work.

There are times when i use something as inspiration for design and it isn’t obviously apparent to the observer, performers or even judges (gasp!). I was designing for a fine high school band one year and their show was based upon Alice Through the Looking Glass. This is a great theme because all kinds of ideas pop right away. And I begin my list of possibilities…..I jot down: Cat, Tea Cup, Hat, Flowers, Caterpillar, Butterfly, Mushroom. Mushroom? I share these with the director who’s response is, “Well we can’t do mushroom because my principal is concerned about the mushroom’s connection with drug culture.” Okay, fair enough. I left it alone. Later while sitting at the computer and actually doing the design work, I reached a transition and was looking at the flow and the shape of a particular form. It was a mushroom……It just happened and it happened to be turned on its side. I didn’t tell anyone. No one ever asked any questions or objected. I knew it was there and that was all that mattered. So even if the inspiration is “hidden” in the design, if you know it’s there and it helps you create. Go for it!

I feel like the best designs are inspired by the music to which they are written. it’s easy to spot such a design. It just seems perfect. Perfect in a way that you just can’t imagine the music WITHOUT the visual design. Or the other way around. I’m sure many of you can think of such a design right now. The inspiration may be a repeated rhythmic pattern or melodic motif. It could be the amount of texture in the score. Listen to the chord progression. What is the direction of the musical line? Or maybe, there isn’t a melodic contour. That can inspire the design as well.

There are times I have to design to music with which I find little to no connection. That’s just going to happen when you’re designing 15 or more shows in a given season. These are the times you may have to fabricate your own inspiration. The design may have to be more shape/flow driven than actually looking like the music. We may have to fabricate our own progression that is simply based more on creating motion and getting the right people to the right spot at the right time in order to present the music in the best way possible.—DB