It’s hard to come home at the end of a normal 8 hour work day only to have to sit back down at your computer and start plugging away at more design work, or more development work like I do every day.

There’s a few things I’ve done in the past that always seem to help me find the motivation, and/or inspiration to get back to work. Most of the things I do are somewhat non-conventional in terms of what some “finding inspiration” articles tell you such as, “Go see a museum!”, or “go walk around the park!” Those suggestions never seemed to help me, and it always felt like I was wasting precious time. Here’s a few tried and tested ways that have helped me stay focused, motivated, and inspired to do more work after an already long work day:

FFFFound (or FFFound with WordPress)

If you’re going to surf the web, try to limit your surfing to places like FFFFound, or start your own personal bookmarking service with WordPress like I did. It doesn’t take long to go through literally hundreds of all sorts of different pieces of illustration, photography, and graphic design pieces that you surely can find some sort of idea, or at the very least some really weird shit that might spark an idea.

A Collection of Good Quotes

I made a post of my most favorite inspirational quotes that I refer to quite often while I’m in the middle of designing t-shirts. It helps ground you and at times can give you a new theme for a design idea. Clipping them with Evernote, or just pasting them into your Facebook profile is what I like to do.

Graphic Novels

Believe it or not I have found graphic novels to be a great source of inspiration for my design work, as well as some of my writings here on the blog and on twitter. Some of my favorites:

• V for Vendetta
• The Killing Joke
• The Watchmen

The illustrations are fantastic, and sometimes the symbolism, themes, and characters are the most interesting part of the novel more so than even the artwork.

Watch Academy Award Speeches

Besides Memorial Day when Saving Private Ryan is on TV unedited, the only other time I tear up in front of the TV is when I watch the Academy Awards. Maybe it’s because I was a film student and ultimately wanted to be a big time Hollywood Director, or maybe it’s because you actually get to see people achieving their ultimate childhood dreams right in front of your eyes. Besides Intervention, you’ll never see a more honest dose of, “reality television.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P552i5xx8ww

Put a shitty Action Movie On in the Background

This may sound counter intuitive to helping get yourself motivated, or inspired, but I’ve found that when I put on old action movies that I’ve seen plenty of times, like Underworld, Doomsday, or Death Race, that it’s actually easy for me to ignore them, and focus on what I’m working on. Plus there’s no temptation to actually sit there and watch what ever may be on. Trying to watch something like Heroes or Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles always has me whipping my head around to see what’s going to happen next. Not so good if you are supposed to be working.

This is going to sound weird… but try trance music

You don’t have to listen to any specific kind of trance music, and I’m an expert on the subject by any means… For some reason, though, I am able to blast through design work and programming. Much like the shitty action movie, it focuses your mind on the task at hand, and doesn’t allow you to become distracted by what you’re listening to.

I can’t think of any time I was ever compelled to sing along to trance music like I do when my iTunes shuffles to “Fat Bottom Girls,” by Queen, or “Beat It,” by Michael Jackson. Best part about trance music is that you can find it for free in the Radio section of iTunes. Some of my personal favorite free, streaming stations are Vocal Trance, and House music from DI.fm.

Honorable Mentions: Turn off AIM, Turn off Twitter, drink Red Bull.

Have any of your own little ways to get motivated? How about posting them in the comments!

After attempting to debunk how Tom Muller did some of his work for Wired magazine I decided to ask him a few additional questions such as  where he gets his inspiration from, and how he got involved in graphic design. Here’s what he had to say…

AssaultBLOG: You mention in pretty good detail how you got out of college in Antwerp and were sort of poking around the yellow pages looking for a “real world” job as your father had pushed you to get into as soon as possible, and that you wanted to get into “THE COOL STUFF”. I know that looking back on college there was a few things I wish I had done differently… and was wondering if you could go back would there be anything you would do differently?

Hmm… Not really. I had a great time in college actually. I didn’t always see eye to eye with my teachers (who does?), but overall I had a good experience; and especially my graduation project was something I had complete control over and that kind of kick started my professional career. The only thing I’d change if I could go back is pay more attention to design history.

AB: Are there any somewhat non-traditional or unusual places you look for design influence?

Anything and everything really. I don’t go looking for specific things to get inspiration. Can be anything – something I see, read, hear… very random.

AB: Most designers struggle with knowing when a project is complete, and personally I know I always have a hard time deciding when a design is done–Can you think of one or two projects in the past ten years in that you were most satisfied with the results? Was there ever a really challenging project that you had a hard time nailing down ideas, or deciding when a design was finished?

To be honest I’m really happy with the stuff I’m currently doing. That’s not to say that my older work has lost its value, but looking back I can see the errors and me struggling a bit finding my way and style if you will. I’d say the work from 2004 onwards is the work I’m most proud of, where I feel that I finally got into a direction I’m happy with – with the Mam Tor Publishing and Ashley Wood projects in particular.

AB: You mention in your blog that you were highly experimental with Photoshop in its early stages ten years ago when it had a 99 layer limit. Since your beginning use with Photoshop has there been one feature, or technique that you can remember learning that totally changed the way you work and design in the software?

Well, “highly experimental” is mildly overstating that I basically didn’t know what I was doing in the beginning and just playing around finding my way around the application and being very impressed with lens flare effect and the like.

I think the computer as a whole changed my way of working, because I got into it pretty late (I was 24 when I finally got my own Mac at home) and used to draw and paint more. So going digital was a complete change for me.

AB: The design work on hellomuller.com spans a broad range of mediums–is there one particular medium that you’ve found you enjoy the most and if so why?

Its all of them. Its all graphic design, just applied to a different medium – be it in print or on screen. I like both, thats why I do them. Although I love doing web design, I need to be able to do some print work to counter balance looking at html and work at 72dpi all day.

Being able to switch between designing a site, or a book, or a logo is what keeps everything fresh and interesting. I don’t want to be doing the same thing all the time.

AB: Are there any mediums you would like to transition into in the future that you may have not already tackled?

Designing a title sequence for a feature film would be interesting to do I think. And comics/graphic novels of course. That one is always high on the list, its just a matter of finding the time and putting my money where my mouth is.

AB: I know you recently launched a website collaboration with your wife…what is it like to collaborate with her, and do you find that collaboration in general makes for better design? Or is there a perfect formula for the number of “chefs in the kitchen” where the design work tends to turn out the best?

Collaborating with her is great. Design-wise we really click in terms of what we like, how we approach a problem and execute it. She’s much more technical than me, so when we’re designing a book for example more often than not she’ll end up designing the actual guts of the book while I play with the more superficial stuff like logos etc. She’s also really good in cutting through the design bullshit and go for effortlessly simple solutions, whereas I’m always trying to come up with needlessly complex visuals and over design it to the point where a seemingly random dot is actually placed in some grid I made up. Just for that dot.

AB: Do you feel it’s important for designers to do personal work and use their skills to address social and economic issues as well as to keep their own voice?

Well, one aspect of being a graphic designer is that you have to realize you’re working in a service industry, and that its our job to communicate other people’s messages. Whether that’s for a global corporation or the local salvation army.

On the other hand I think its very important that designers initiate personal work, if only to keep things interesting and grow creatively.

Relevant Links:

• Comic Book Tattoo – The graphic anthology of the year
  
• Hello Muller
• Tom’s Blog
• Mr. and Mrs. M (Tom and his wife’s site)