Lately I have found myself wearing my designer hat again after slipping out of it for a while to work with some PHP. Creativity is a fickle thing. It comes and goes when it feels like it, without any regard for you and your deadlines. So how does a modern designer take back some control and attempt to harness the creative instinct?

Fortunately there is no shortage of resources promising quick and easy inspiration. Every day (every hour?) I get Twitter and RSS feed updates saying things like, “50 Websites to Inpsire You” or “200 Photos to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing”. But do these resources really inspire, or are they just more digital clutter like I talked about in my last post?

In my business, it has been important to me to establish a workflow. Having standard practices brings order to an often chaotic process. But how exactly do you standardize inspiration and the creative process? That initial phase of website building follows no rules, and that can be both a blessing and a curse.

Fortunately for me I have been through the process enough times to have a rough guide of my own at this point. I start by listing out the known factors. What type of business is it? A wine bar will require a very different website from a law firm. What are they selling? What is the call-to-action on the page going to be? From there I start to sketch out a rough draft on paper. I find that listing out the elements of the site helps me a great deal.

I have a number of CSS galleries bookmarked in my Delicious account, and I make sure to visit them and check out the latest designs. CSS has developed to the point where it really allows for near limitless possibilites when it comes to putting creative ideas on the page. There are many top designers practicing today who regularly post their work to provide inspiration to the masses. While I go out of my way to not rip-off their ideas, more than once I have seen page elements positioned or images and color schemes used in ways that I had never thought of. This is where the inspiration comes in. I will return to my own design, which by now has made its way into Photoshop and try out some of the ideas while they are still fresh in my head. Back to the galleries–rinse and repeat.

It really is a fine line between wanting to use the newest coolest tricks in your work and keeping focused on delivering what the client needs. And if you can do both, even better.