Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Tanja Šovanj

Anyone who has experienced a creative block — which I believe is pretty much everyone in the creative industry — knows that it’s not the most pleasant experience. It’s a challenge that appears on a daily basis and is an essential part of the creative process.

The sooner we accept creative block not as a problem, but as something common and expected, the easier we’ll be able to find a solution to overcome it. Demystifying and confronting the problem always puts us on the path of progress.

It may not appear that way, but creative blocks open up many opportunities to us: to become better at what we do, to improve the way we work and solve problems, to find out what is it that we keep doing wrong and find the most effective way to change that behaviour.

Now I’ll focus on different causes of creative blocks, how to overcome them and things we can do to avoid them. Although my analysis is within the field of web design, it is not limited to that field only but can be applied to all other creative fields as well. So, let’s dive in!

Possible causes of creative blocks: how to detect and solve them

There are a couple of possible causes and circumstances under which a creative block occurs. To overcome it successfully, first we should find out what caused it. Only then we’ll have the tools that will help us to solve the problem.

Here are some of the causes of creative block that I’ve noticed in my web design experience:

insufficiently detailed preparation for the project
lack of real interest for the project
lack of inspirational material
monotonous workflow
unsolved life problems

Lack of detailed preparation for the project and how that influences appearance of creative block

Every design project should start with a detailed preparation. During this phase we explore everything that’s related to our client’s business. We try to cover as many details as we can, because sometimes the details can have a crucial role in the project’s development. This phase enables us to understand our client and what she’s trying to accomplish. We tend to ask as many questions as necessary, so we could understand the basic goal of the website that we’re designing and what kind of information will the users seek.

If this first step is done sloppily, we’ll have to pay for our recklessness in the next phase. Preparation is the foundation of every project, and every phase that follows depends on it. If we do it right, our work unfolds harmoniously. But if we don’t, we’ll stumble upon what we might then call a creative block.

If we don’t know exactly the concept of every page of the website that we’re designing, don’t have information about every element that has to appear on the concrete page, haven’t built a detailed information architecture — it’s not a surprise that we’re unable to continue working and we sure won’t be able to be creative.

Lack of real interest for the project

Early in our web design career we may take on projects that we’re not personally interested in. Sometimes we just want to gain experience, develop some business connections and earn some money. And although we try our best to be professional, it may happen that we are unable to overcome the lack of interest in the subject. When that happens we tend to overlook details, lose focus and do a bad job.

Lack of inspirational material and monotonous workflow

Maybe we managed to bypass all of the previous obstacles, but forgot about the quest for creative material that is necessary for our project. When we have access only to our own design experience — which is very limited in the beginning of our web design career — it often happens that we’re unable to find the creative solution among those limited boundaries.

If we tend to do the same things every day and in the same way, it could be really hard to get creative. Maybe we got so used to our routine that we’ve become passive and unable to see familiar things from a new perspective.

Unsolved life problem(s)

Although we’re discussing causes of creative block within web design, our creativity is not separated from our existence, so I’d like to take the holistic approach on the subject. Having that in mind, we can conclude that the cause of our creative block can also be some unsolved problem, dilemma, secret or psychological problem. If our mind is occupied with some bigger personal problem that we’re dealing with, we are unable to solve design problems in a creative way.

In the second part we’ll cover steps to prevent creative block.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article! If you liked it and found some value in it, please click the ❤ to share it with others, start following me on Medium or do both. I would really like to hear from you and learn how you approach this topic, so feel welcome to leave your comment. I’m looking forward to reading it. 🙂

Tanja Šovanj is a former literature graduate who made a career shift into the world of web design. Now I pursue my new career and enjoy sharing my experiences with others who are going through a similar transition. You can see how I work at: https://tanja-sovanj.squarespace.com.

Creative block (part 1): Possible causes was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Creative block (part 1): Possible causes

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