When your design well runs dry
Creative slumps are part of the job, and they can hit harder when your usual escapes—travel, museums, live shows—are off the table. Rather than forcing a breakthrough, the designers at Figma suggest a different approach: step away from the screen and let your mind wander somewhere unexpected.
Finding inspiration often means looking outside the immediate problem. Here’s how they reset when the ideas stop flowing.
Shift gears with hands-on projects
If you’re stuck in a cycle of overthinking, the fix may be to make something with no practical purpose. Brand designer Remilla Ty finds creative energy in low-stakes hobbies. “Lately, I've been finding inspiration through new simple hobbies like collecting plants and rearranging furniture,” she says.
Those small joys can be professional fuel. Ty turned her daily drawings into stickers, noting that such “passion projects inspire me to do work throughout the week” and give her a “creative boost.”
Principal designer Rasmus Andersson suggests exploring topics entirely outside your field: “I also find inspiration in learning about other things seemingly unrelated to design, like computer science research, music or games.”
Mine your own archive
When the outside world feels unreachable, your personal history can be a rich source. Creative Director Tori Hinn goes through her own photo library to reconnect with past perspectives. “Photography is one of my biggest personal passions and I’ll get re-energized from looking at photos I took in (literally) different times,” she says.
It's a form of travel you don't need a passport for—a way to revisit the visuals, colors and compositions that once captured your eye.
Lean on the community
Since we can't gather in person, online circles are becoming the new studio hallway. Product designer Katherine Frazer uses visual discovery tool Are.na because “it’s more collaborative [than] other bookmarking sites,” allowing people to contribute openly to shared boards.
Hinn and Noah Levin, Design Director, find inspiration in social feeds. Andersson follows specific accounts for curated content, while Levin lets discovery happen organically: “I look for designers who share interesting things on Twitter, which usually leads me to follow more people who are doing interesting things, and the cycle begins.”
Look past the design bubble
Sometimes the most potent inspiration comes from a place farthest from your discipline. Hinn puts it bluntly: “I think the further the thing I’m looking at is from design, the more it inspires me. My brain has to be more creative and work harder to make connections between the conceptual things I’m thinking about and the visuals that also want to come out.” She draws from music and film; Ty prefers shows about innovation but not design, specifically cooking programs.
This is where Andersson offers a word of caution. Resist the urge to study how peers solved your identical problem. “At all costs, avoid looking at work by others that is solving that specific thing. Either it becomes a bad influence (you end up with a copy-paste) or your creativity is herded into a narrow mindset.” His workaround? Seek out solutions in similar fields to the one you're stuck in, which forces you to translate and reinterpret.
Creative energy will naturally move in waves, and it's wise to respect the low tide. The goal isn't relentless productivity—it's injecting a bit of imagination into whatever you touch next.
