I’ve been feeling a little under the weather, so this week I’ve turned over my column to famed Graphic Designer/Astrologer Samoht Naphets, who has probed the cosmos and shuffled through his Illustrator-designed star charts to plot your course through this month in the creative cosmos. Enjoy!

Aries (Mar. 21 - April 19): With your Moon House in the Wacom Constellation, it will be difficult to stop you from purchasing an iPod you don’t really need. Don’t worry — your credit card is over the limit anyway and your current iPod just needs a little shim to steady the hard drive. Bad day for formatting DVDs.

Taurus (April 20 - May 20): Bad week for the Bull as you move through the influence of Uranus. Eat fiber and try not sitting at your desk too long.

Gemini (May 21 - June 20): Remember that you said you were waiting for that one cosmic sign as to when you should tell your boss to stick it, reformat your hard drive, toss your ID badge on her desk, light a cigarette and smoke it all the way out of the building? Guess what…that time hasn’t come yet. While you’re waiting, use the upper management email addresses for your porn accounts.

Cancer (June 21 - July 22): Bad day for a wireless connection. Worse day for a wire-filled connection. Stay at home, eat Cheetos and upgrade your copy of Adobe Creative Suite. Wash your hands to avoid cross-cheeto contamination.

Leo (July 23 - Aug. 22): This is your month to shine! With your sign ascending into the House of 802.11n, every design project you touch will turn to gold. Unfortunately, Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer people will hate you for it. Try not to leave work alone, and take a Virgo, Aquarius or Sagittarius with you. Make sure none of them run as fast as you — it will help create plausible deniability.

Virgo (Aug. 23 - Sept. 22): A perfect time for that long-hidden desire for the potato-shaped, yet oddly attractive IT tech who is also a sensual Pisces. Think of the body odor as “musk” — it’ll help fan the flames of passion, and also divert your attention from the massive World of Warcraft Action Figure display in his studio apartment.

Libra (Sept. 23 - Oct. 22): Like all Libras, you strive for balance today, which is why you will balance equal amounts of brilliant graphic design at your current crap job with portfolio building and resume updating. Tonight: take a break from the usual drinking and passing out, and do laundry; you have a job interview tomorrow and don’t have any clean clothes.

Scorpio (Oct. 23 - Nov. 21): You will download an illegal copy of Photoshop today from some obscure Russian site. You will think you’re very clever until you realize you can’t read Cyrillic. Smooth move, Comrade.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 21): Fate smiles upon you as you are blessed with a brand new computer at work. Then fate kicks you in the dangly bits when you discover a “Vista” sticker on the front of it. Then fate smiles again, as the boss has hired someone whose sole job is to click on all those pop-up approval windows.

Capricorn (Dec. 22 - Jan. 19): You will make the sudden and unexpected decision to try self-employment this week when someone from upper management sticks their head in the door and says “Hey — I finally got a copy of InDesign so I don’t have to bother you all the time! Can you drop by and teach me how to use it in about an hour?”

Aquarius (Jan. 20 - Feb. 18): A Leo will ask you if you’d like to walk out of work together. If you’re a professional runner, say yes. If not…suggest the Sagittarius with the powdered donut habit.

Pisces (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20): Frank, you owe me 20 bucks for getting the hot GD Virgo to even THINK of making out with your lumpy body. I’ll take PayPal, and don’t make me wait.

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits | Working Pro bono

I’m blocked.

No, not that way. Plenty of fiber here. But I sit here, hunched over the keyboard with not a valid thing to say.

And it’s sad, really. I stare at my keyboard that I meticulously cleaned over a period of two days with a can of compressed air, a damp washcloth and a sense of great discomfort every time I dug something new out of the vaguely yellowing keyboard. For those of you who have never actually done this, it’s much like attending your senior prom…all proud, humbling and grotesque in one fell swoop. All I could think most of the time was “I understand the lint…I get the bits of Doritos and dust…but my God…did I really eat chili at this computer? And how often?”

But then suddenly, swirls of neurons sputter and fire, sputter and fire, like bits of paper caught in a blaze, and I realize that inspiration, the act of being inspired, is exactly that…a moment…a thought, a switch…the drawing in of a creative breath.

And now, I’m not so worried about being at a loss for words. Or design ideas, or any number of things. Creativity, like happiness, or diamonds, or a really good BLT, is precious because it’s not constant. Constancy is the death of inspiration.

I have two points here. One is obvious: Clean your keyboard more often than once every five years. The other is more vague, but still excellent advice: When you’re at a loss for that ‘eureka’ moment, wait for the wheel to turn your way. Think of it like chasing a ball, only to kick it away as your reach down, hands grasping. It may feel like you’re making forward progress, but the truth is you’re eventually gonna run smack into a real wall.

So, next time you can’t figure out the next logo, or the next business decision, or whether that’s chili or pad thai sauce…take a moment – grab a can of compressed air, and clear your creative space. Trust me. It’ll come back to you.

How about you? What do you do when the creative balls doesn’t bounce back right away?

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits | Working Pro-bono

I am stuck. Creatively, that is.

The majority of my bread-and butter work right now is more template-based, production-style work, than real creative stuff. And while I do get plenty of web design work, once the design itself is done, I have to kick into “code mode,” which isn’t something I find particularly creative. And don’t even think about having me try to switch between “code” and “creative” modes – that’s nearly impossible!

So, given that 75% of my work doesn’t require that much creativity, I’m always looking for creative projects. I mean, who isn’t in this field, right?

Well, recently, I got a nice, creative project. I was pretty excited to get back to my desk and start working on it. But when I finally DID start working on it, I realized I didn’t have any ideas. So I started with my usual tactics…writing down words that I associated with the business – feelings, adjectives, colors – just a stream-of-consciousness list of words, hoping to spark something spectacular.

Once I did that, I looked at my list, and gave it a good, hard, looking at…only to realize I didn’t have anything more than I did before, except this list of words. Then, I decided to assign blame: I couldn’t come up with anything because I’m not so good at drawing. Now, I am working on that, and taking some drawing lessons, but I thought maybe my skills weren’t quite far enough along, and that’s why I didn’t have any great ideas.

So there I was, staring at this list of words, mad because my drawing skills weren’t where I wanted them to be, when I had a thought: IF I could draw whatever I wanted to, and my skills were where I wanted them to be, WHAT would I draw? Again, I drew a blank (pun…intended.)

At that point, I finally realized what was going on. It had nothing to do with the list of words, or the fact that I couldn’t draw the way I wanted to. I was stuck. Plain and simple. I had a creative block. Now that I had a realistic grasp of the problem, I knew I could begin to find the solution.

That’s where I am today. I’m still a bit stuck, but I’m working on it. I’ve found a lot of great resources (see below) to help get unstuck…but for me, the biggest thing has been realizing that as a designer, I’m expected to create on-demand. And as a solopreneur, the task of creating falls solely on me. Given that, how can we be expected to be creative ALL the time? Writer’s have Writer’s Block. Creatives have Creative Blocks. It makes sense to me. But what do you do when you’re on a deadline?!?

Well, now that I know what the issue is, and have found a bunch of resources, I’m working on a way to help prevent this in the future. Little things, like spending 10 minutes everyday before I start my work doing a creative exercise (like those found in Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield or Designers in Handcuffs by Pat Matson Knapp), or taking a 15 minute walk in the park to clear my head and get away from the computer, or listening to some podcasts about creativity and creative blocks.

While there is one project that’s still giving me a little trouble creatively, I can tell I’m getting close. I’m actually starting to look at the problem differently, rather than using my usual methods of problem solving, and I’m starting to feel excited about the project again.

Now, I know this article is a little bit off-track, given the topic of my column, but I figured I’m not the only one that faces creative blocks, and thought I’d share some of my experiences and resources. Because the bottom line is that as designers and creatives, we ARE expected to create on-demand, and more often than not, with a deadline that doesn’t allow much room if we do get stuck.

So here’s a list of resources that I’ve found, and if you have any resources, tips or tricks that you use to help overcome creative blocks, I’d LOVE to hear them!

Resources:

Books

• Creative Utopia: 12 Ways to Realize Total Creativity, Theo Stephan Williams
• Designers in Handcuffs: How to create great graphics when time, materials and money are tight, Pat Matson Knapp
• Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake up Your Brain, Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield
• Creative Sparks, Jim Krause
• Zing!: Five Steps and 101 Tips for Creativity On Command, by Sam Harrison
• Ideaspotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea, by Sam Harrison

Online Resources

• Accidental Creative
• Creativity to Spare
• Design Guy
• Media Artists Secrets, Franklin McMahon
• SketcheeBook
• Killer Innovations

Join me next time, as I continue my journey Out of the Bedroom,
Tamar Wallace | Principal, TAMAR Graphics