Five Design Exercises 25.February.2009
The same old rut, for the same old clients, can get a little boring especially for graphic designers and other creative types. Plus, with the economy slowing there may not be a large professional development budget for high cost inspiration. Here are five ideas that take from a half hour to have a day and are sure to spark up a Friday afternoon. Not in an office environment with other creatives? Challenge some of your fellow freelancers to some friendly competition.
30 Minute Business Cards
Create a short design brief, complete with company name, description and other design requirements. Then challenge members of your team to create the most original business cards for this fictional client. This is especially fun to do with web designers or others who don’t normally get the opportunity to design business cards. Additional rules can be introduced such as doubling the time to 1 hour but not using a computer for the first 30 minutes, only paper and pencil for concepting.
Lightboxing
Everyone’s favorite stock photo outfitter, Veer, gets credit for this one. Give 2 or more designers the same small lightbox of elements. Designate a time limit and theme then set them loose. Judge the entries at the end or just play for fun.
Layer Tennis
Taking the Lightboxing idea one step further by passing a design from one person to the next and back again is Photoshop Tennis. You can play volley style with two designers or form a huge round robin match by including up to 10. This can keep the heart pounding because each designer is only allowed to have the file for 15 minutes at a time and can even be enhanced with a third party offering live play by play. You can easily get your not print designers involved by turning Photoshop Tennis into Flash Tennis, CSS Tennis or FinalCut Tennis.
Album Cover
You may have seen this bouncing around Facebook. You take a random quote, a random Wikipedia entry and a random photo and create an album cover for a fictional band. If you work solo, this exercise can still be a blast. If you don’t, consider getting the whole office involved, even non-graphic designers can participate thanks to services like Adobe’s Free Photoshop.com.
Helvetica Film
Certainly someone in the office has a NetFlix subscription. This film on the creation and life of one of the ubiquitous fonts is available to watch streaming on demand from NetFlix.com. Granted vegging out in front of the conference room video projector is a passive way to spend two hours, but it is sure to inspire you and your team.