Being Open to Inspiration: Looking for the Design Around Us

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of attending an excellent conference session covering marching band show planning. During the course of the presentation, a book by the title of, Picture This How Pictures Work by Molly Bang was recommended. I immediately took out my cell phone to make a note of it, but as I was doing that I remembered that I have an app on there that allows me to place an order with a certain world-wide online retailer with a simple click of a button. Done. The book would arrive at my apartment within hours.

Fast forward a few days….I’m packing for a pep band trip to our league basketball tournament in Indianapolis. I’ve begun measuring band bus trips by the number of movies that can be watched enroute. Indianapolis is roughly a 5 movie trip. Now, not to downplay the quality of movies my college students watch, but sometimes I’m just not that interested and knowing this I made sure to place the book in my backpack for the trip. What a great find! It’s an easy read (has lots of pictures) and is filled with great thoughtful concepts for any visual designer. It had me thinking about the use of color, scale, space, arrangement, shape/line, etc. right away! I found that it was hard to put the book down while cruising down the highway in our touring coach.

I had decided I would spend my free time in Indianapolis (we didn’t get much because we only played one game) visiting a museum. This turned out to be a great choice because the weather was cool/rainy. I’ve been to Indianapolis several times so I’m quite familiar with the downtown area of the city. I had previously visited the PASIC Museum, the Indiana State Museum, the Indiana State House, and the NCAA Hall of Champions. I highly recommend all of them. I had thought I would like to repeat the state museum and set out on foot in that direction. If you are familiar, all of these places are within about 1/2 mile of each other. I actually had to walk past PASIC and another museum, the Eiteljorg Museum of Western Art on my way. As I was passing the Eiteljorg, it occurred to me that I had never been inside that building. I wonder what it’s like? I thought to myself and I turned and approached the museum.

As I walked from piece to piece, I began to look at the works a little differently since I had been reading Picture This. I was dissecting them and considering placement of the subjects, color, use of space, scale, etc. I usually move pretty quickly through any museum because I just want to see EVERYTHING and don’t want to run out of time. But not today. I decided I would be open to inspiration and look for the design around me.

While in the first room, I encountered a docent of the museum who was a spirited older gentleman. He had no difficulty at all striking up a conversation. Where are you from? Why are you in Indy? Have you been here before? We probably shot the breeze for 15 minutes or so. During that time, he mentioned that on average a person spends 11 seconds per piece as they move through a museum. 11 seconds? Stop and count 11 seconds. Now think about being in the Louvre in Paris and you’re looking at the Mona Lisa. 11 seconds would not be a very long time to look at such a work. So for the rest of my visit, I was even more aware of the time I spent with each item. We have to slow down to find the inspiration around us.

As an added bonus, there was a temporary exhibit of quilts. This was special to me for a couple of reasons. 1. My grandmother and a great aunt were both quilters and I can remember seeing their work. 2. Quite a few of the quilts in the exhibit were from……Lincoln, Nebraska!

By the way, I highly recommend the Eiteljorg. They not only have works by Remington, Henri, and others. They also have quite an impressive collection of Native American art. Check it out the next time you’re in Indianapolis! And if you make your way to Lincoln, check out the International Quilt Museum. https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/

Lets slow down and be open to inspiration: looking for the design around us.

Let me know you’ve read this and leave me a comment. —DB