Beating Creative Block: 10 Ways to Bring Back Creativity

via youthedesigner.com

As creative people, there are those days that our brain seems dead. No ideas coming in, run out of creative fuel while thinking of the deadliest deadlines of projects on going. Commonly known as creative block, many are faced with this kind of situation either caused by personal problems, mental block, emotional barrier, communication breakdown, etc. All people in the creative industry is experiencing it. A writer, designer, painter, sculptor or even an art director is once faced with this frustrating situation. Although creative block is inevitable and creatives can overcome it from time to time, it should not be ignored for it can actually be career damaging.

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Overcome Designer’s Block: Tips and Tricks

via designmodo.com

During the last few weeks I seem to keep having those days where nothing creative seems to happen. I try – really hard – but the creative juices just aren’t flowing. And trying harder just seems to make the problem worse.

Every get stuck in those situations?

How do you get out of them?

For me, the answer was two-fold. First, I had to get away from the desk and re-energize my brain. Then I had to start working … but with the help of a few easy tools. Sometimes overcoming “designer’s block” is not easy you can do it. Here are a few tips to break the block and examples of creative design to help inspire you.

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Web Design Trend: Color Blocking

via queness.com

Color blocking could be called the bricks and mortar trend of web design. Using square (or rectangular or even curved) colored boxes as a design tool are beginning to show up almost everywhere.

The trend started in the world of fashion. Bags, shoes and even sweaters sported the trend of putting multiple colors together – but not as a pattern – as separate blocks of color.

Now that trend is moving into design.

And the colors you see may not be what you would expect. The trend is focused primarily around bright colors – no beige here – and hues that don’t always seemingly go together. (This very much mirrors the fashion trend.) So what you may find is a website that uses pops of color in pink, orange and red … all at the same time.

But it works – well. The popular design tool is simple and creates a lot of high contrast. The visual effect can be quite stunning as designers use color to guide users through a site. Everyone is doing it in slightly different ways as well -- solid color blocks, color blocks for text or photos and color blocks with a touch of animation for a hover-over surprise.

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Inspirations and writing: How to overcome the “writer´s block”

via inspirationfeed.com

As a freelance writer and blog write it is not always easy to get new ideas for articles and posts every day. It is like a swing: there are days in which your brain is a volcano of ideas; you get excited about so many topics and angles that you cannot keep track of them. And then there are those bad days where… well, you stare at your black Word page and nothing comes out; your inspiration and motivation just abandon you and nothing happens.

I am sure all of us have, at least once, experienced this hopeless and frustrating situation. Unfortunately there are deadlines and personal pressure to make such misdeed even worse! Then how to cope with this? I will share with you what helps me reducing and sometimes eliminating the chances of experiencing the so called writer´s block and inspirational shortage:

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Google Blocked In China: Another Twist In Their Ongoing Cold War

via readwrite.com

Just in time for the 18th Communist Party Congress, all Google services have suddenly been blocked in China. Traffic fell off Friday according to the Google Transparency Report.

“We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” Google said in a statement. So what is wrong, then?

Search, Gmail and Maps are all blocked, and searches for Google services are being rerouted via DNS spoofing to another site located in Korea. This blackout kicked in at the outset of the Communist Party Congress, a major event that takes place every ten years at which the government’s new leadership is appointed through a secretive process.

While we don’t yet have comment from Chinese officials, the two possibile causes are government restrictions or a doozie of a job by hackers. Given the timing and the extent of the outage, an official intervention seems more likely. Either way, Google's response will be seen as a test of its character. How much is Google willing to put up with to do business in the Chinese market.

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How Dribbble Can Inspire Your Next Project

via rapidxhtml.com

If you are a graphics/web designer, then you may have heard about Dribbble. In fact some of you may have been using Dribbble already. For those who are not, “Dribbble is show and tell for designers, who share shots — small screenshots of the designs and applications they’re working on”.

Dribbble is well known for its great community of designers, not only do they raise the standards of design but also provide a great source of inspiration. Talented graphics and web designers from all around the world hang out at Dribbble and share their latest work as small 400×300 pixels screenshots. You can follower designers, like your favorite shot, comment and share through Twitter!

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A Tech Way Around “Creative Block”

via techcrunch.com

I’ve always found it interesting when the non-creatives in a company estimate how long it will take the creative team to accomplish something. What’s often baked into their scheduling assumption is that the creatives will deliver results at a predictable and regular rate. They expect that 10 hours of creative work will produce 10 hours worth of pretty pictures; as predictable as a banker crunching numbers.

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How To Block Ads On YouTube And 6 Other Cool Tricks

via businessinsider.com

We love YouTube, but there's a lot we'd change about it, too.

The ads are a little too obtrusive for us, we'd love to set a default video quality, and the famously obnoxious comments are often better left out completely.

Thankfully there are browser plugins that make it a snap to change the way you interact with the definitive video-sharing site for the better.

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Where Tetris Blocks Come From - Funny Graphic

via makeuseof.com

It all makes sense now. The reality of it is: an 8-bit slaughter machine...

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Tips on Dealing With Creative Blocks

via bloomwebdesign.net

Creative block is the inability to access the flow of inspiration and creativity. It can last for days, months, and in some cases even years. Most creative individuals like designers, artists, writers and even musicians are prone to it. It is very frustrating phase, known to make a person feel like he can no longer do anything productive.

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How To Silence People On Facebook You Don't Want To Hear From Anymore

via businessinsider.com

Your Facebook News Feed shows you updates from everyone you're friends with, no matter how close you are to them.

You don't care about them.

But you do care about your close friends, and now Facebook lets you see only the things they post and do.

It's aptly called Close Friends. We'll show you how it works.

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How to Unblock a Designer’s Block

via smashingbuzz.com

We all have our good days and bad days. If you belong to any creative field, I am sure you would have faced a creative block. If you are a designer, sometimes you will come up with excellent designs without putting in a lot of effort and sometimes, creating even a single design would be seem impossible and you will feel that you have lost all of your talent. If you go through such designer’s block, do not worry as you are not the only person. As I said, this is a part of everyone’s life who is into a creative job. This is natural and instead of allowing it to put you down, you need to combat days with designer’s block. Honestly, dealing with creative block can be very frustrating but, there are ways so you need not to panic about it.

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3 Simple Steps for Staring Down Writer’s Block

via copyblogger.com

Writer’s block feels like the end of your world.

Firstly, there’s the frustration — not being able to do something you love, that normally works like a dream.

Like getting into your finely-tuned, lovingly-polished car, turning the key and hearing a pathetic splutter. Or hitting the ‘Jump to Lightspeed’ button and watching the stars just sit there while the TIE Fighters close in.

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