First Draft Club

There's this quote by painter Chuck Close I've first come across years ago which always rang true, but I never really understood its meaning until now:

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself."

Chuck Close produced thousands of paintings. Many of his portrait paintings are 7 feet tall and 7 feet high. He clearly wasn't waiting around. There's a lot we (as designers) could learn from him, but especially from craftsmanship.

Sure, you can have ideas. You can try to be innovative. But none of that is necessary to do good design. What is necessary is material. The best way to improve your design process is to think of inspiration not as some preternatural creative direction that comes from without, but as the timber to the woodworker.