SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

Simplify and Improve Your Designs with the Bonsai Tree Method

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Want to simplify and improve your designs? As is often the case, sometimes the best design inspiration comes from outside of the design field. In this case, you can look to an ancient Japanese art form: bonsai trees. You can simplify and improve your designs with the Bonsai Tree Method.

The thousand-year-old Japanese bonsai tree tradition is an art form of cultivating a miniature tree in a pot. Both the pruning and shaping of the tree as well as contemplation is meant to be an enjoyable activity for one’s self, rather than for the purpose of producing food, planting in a garden, or something.

5 Reasons Travel Can Improve Your Design Work

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Traveling rocks. Practically everyone likes to travel, whether by land, sea or air. And why not? You get excited to see new environments and people, try new things, and be surrounded by fresh and inspiring surroundings. But did you know that traveling can actually help your design work as well? Yep, there are at least 5 reasons travel can improve your design work.

Now, to be clear, traveling doesn’t directly help your designs (except for reason #4 below). Rather, travel can indirectly improve your design work by improving yourself. When you become better/happier/more excited, your work becomes better as well. It’s like fuel for your brilliant work, and traveling constantly refuels you. The reasons explained below will show you just how traveling does that.

3 Reasons Doing Other Art Makes You a Better Designer

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Want to be a better designer? Silly question – of course you would. Who wouldn’t, right? There are plenty of obvious ways to improve: practice and design relentlessly, try different styles, get outside of your comfort zone and thus force yourself to learn new techniques, and so forth.

But did you know that by doing other art forms – music, film and video, painting, writing, developing – you can actually improve your designs?

Unlock the Designs You’re Truly Meant to Create

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Are you not your true self? Most designers aren’t. After all, it’s not that easy! We create designs we’re not 100% into or best at. Instead, we withhold our unique design contribution to the world. What we do is simply good enough designs. Good—maybe even great—but not uniquely and insanely amazing.

Do you want to be one of the countless me-too designers, or do you want to add your unique and remarkable contribution to the design world? If you answered yes to the first one, you can stop reading the rest of this article. It’s not for you. That’s okay – some people enjoy the activity of designing and don’t mind stopping at simply paying the bills with it. That’s perfectly fine.

Being Versatile vs. Sticking to One Style – Pros and Cons

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As a designer, should you be versatile or stick to a particular style? That’s the age-old debate (well, it’s not that old, but a long-lasting one nonetheless). Being extremely versatile vs. sticking to one style: each has its pros and cons.

On the one hand, by being versatile, you can adapt to and attract more clients – but you’re not developing your unique style and design “voice” as much. On the other hand, by sticking to one style, you dig beyond the surface and become a unique expert in that niche – but you’re alienating otherwise-good clients who don’t want that specific style done for their work.

Be a Better Designer by Doing More Non-Design Things

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Want to be a better designer? To come up with more creative and innovative designs? And make sure that you don’t deviate from the design career path that you’re most passionate and excited about? Well, you can be a better designer by doing more non-design things.

Huh? Be a better designer by actually doing more non-design activities? That may sound counterintuitive to some. After all, when someone wants to get better at something, they should surround themselves with more of that activity, not less, right? Well, not exactly.

5 Critical Design Lessons From Pixar

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A surefire way to move your design career ahead is to learn from masters in their fields. And there’s no doubt that Pixar is one of the top animation studios in the world. By looking at how and why the studio is so successful, you can actually learn 5 design lessons.

It’s appropriate that design inspiration can be pulled from Pixar. After all, they’re visual and technological geniuses. Toy Story, Finding Nemo, WALL-E – all were breakthroughs in animation. Yet it’s how Pixar actually operates and creates that yields the most useful lessons. Ones that can take your design career to infinity and beyond!

The Daft Punk Guide to Bold and Memorable Designs

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Want to create bold and memorable designs? Find unlikely inspiration from one of the most iconic electronic artists of our time: Daft Punk. This article is a 3-step Daft Punk guide to bold and memorable designs.

Daft Punk is a very popular and influential music duo, especially when you consider they come from the relatively underground genre of electronic music. But this humans-turned-robots duo who create irresistible and inventive dance music didn’t become that way by accident. They had key ingredients to their success as bold and memorable music artists.

Simple Ways To Make More Creative Designs

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Almost every designer wants to be more creative. To make more creative designs. But as you’re well aware of, creativity is a finicky thing – you can’t just be creative at will. Yet some designers just seem to be more creative, more consistently, than others.

How de they do it? Well, one way to easily make more creative designs is to set creative limits on yourself. Doing so can really help you be creative more consistently.

5 Things The Beatles Can Teach You About Design

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The Beatles are probably one of the most iconic popular music groups of our time. They were considered the best and most popular at what they did, and they deservingly secured their spot in our history books.

Their influence and mastery of creativity extends even beyond music. In fact, there are actually 5 things the Beatles can teach you about design.