Where does inspiration come from? People often say that inspiration is a natural gift, and not everyone has it. But Mizuno Manabu tells us that inspiration comes from collecting information and accumulating knowledge.
When you ask someone who works in creative fields what they want most, they’ll tell you it’s inspiration.
Inspiration is like light, inspiration is like fire. Designers want to capture the audience’s attention, product managers want to cleverly solve users’ pain points. But no matter how hard we search our minds, inspiration only emerges unexpectedly. In those moments when we can’t find inspiration, I think maybe it’s because I’m too ordinary, and inspiration only belongs to those with a natural talent.
Until I read “Where Does Inspiration Come From?”, the author is Japanese designer Mizuno Manabu, who founded Good Design Company in 1999 and is currently the creative director. The company specializes in commercial design, covering packaging, trademarks, and product design. You may not have heard of his name, but you’ve definitely heard of his most famous work - that Kumamon bear that brought in approximately ¥68 billion to Kumamoto Prefecture within two years.
Where Does Inspiration Come From?
Mizuno Manabu believes that inspiration is not the result of a fevered brain or an innate talent. Inspiration is a “feeling” - the feeling that something should be done in a certain way. And this “feeling” can be polished through accumulated knowledge and objective thinking.
Mizuno Manabu’s concept of “accumulated knowledge” can be understood as benchmarking, so the principles presented in this book are simple: to create a good work, one must study many good works and objectively analyze what makes them good. The principle is simple, but putting it into practice is not easy.
What hinders us is that we understand the principle, but don’t know the details of how to put it into action.
Collecting Competitors and Analyzing Them
When it comes to collecting competitors, everyone can come up with method 123. However, without a correct direction, the competitors found may not bring inspiration. Mizuno Manabu introduces his own methods for collecting and analyzing competitors in this book.
- Classic Products of the Same Category. When searching for competitors, first find classic products of the same category. What are considered “classic” products? Perhaps they have a good reputation among users, or they are considered masterpieces by others. For example, when writing, look at the classics written by famous authors; in product design, look at products that were popular globally (and may still be today). In the process of judging what is considered classic, one’s thinking ability is also honed.
- What’s Trending Now. Classic products are those from the past, but to create a product or design that meets current needs, understanding what’s trending now is essential. For example, look at popular articles on public platforms, short videos, and anonymous social media.
- Finding Common Ground Between Classic Products and Current Trends. Everything changes, but human nature remains eternal. Find the common ground between classic products and current trends, and analyze why this common ground exists. For example, microblogging and anonymous social media are both based on people’s desire to express themselves; live streaming and short videos are both based on people’s curiosity… Of course, not everything is applicable.
- Drawing Conclusions. After analyzing why classic products and current trends are popular, draw conclusions and apply them to your own design. This conclusion may be that “customers will hesitate to enter a store because they’re afraid of stepping on dirty floors, so the floor of a department store should be designed as dark.” Such conclusions can give direction to your design.
Mizuno Manabu’s method is effective, but it also has its limitations. Competitors are only found within the same category, and the number is limited. Especially in today’s rapidly updating internet products, many products have few or no competitors.
Multidimensional Crazy Association
In a situation where there are few competitors of the same category, one can find related products by associating key words to obtain inspiration. This example is based on my experience collecting competitors for a temple website. The client is a domestic mountain temple, and they want their website to be different from traditional websites in China.
- Determining Product Key Words. I set the key words as: temple, website, Zen, quiet. Whatever comes up when thinking about these key words, write it down without limitations. If one can’t think of key words, expand from categories, target audience, features, functions, and what kind of feeling users want to have.
- Product Key Word Association. Based on the determined key words, search for websites, and don’t limit yourself to domestic websites. Look at Japanese temples’ websites, which are very well done. Through searching for “Zen,” one can understand that Zen-inspired images often have blank space, still life, and quiet features. These can be used in specific page design and setting.
- Derivative Key Word Association. Derivative key words refer to associating with original key words, thinking of similar words. First, think about the characteristics of the key words. Temple: visitors, photography, scenery… Based on these characteristics, I associate with “scenic spot.” Temples are sometimes scenic spots, based on this search for related scenic spot websites as competitors.
After analyzing, one will find that there are more and more competitors, so it’s necessary to condense and select those with high relevance and good experiences.
Finding Precision in Design
In his book, Mizuno Manabu talks about having “precision” not just in design, but also in one’s thinking. This means having a clear idea of why you’re designing something a certain way. For example, when someone asks you why you chose blue for an icon instead of red, you might not have thought it through beforehand. But if you think about this question during the design process and pay attention to similar icons in competitors’ designs, you’ll start wondering why everyone else is using blue too. Your assumption will then become your design principle, which is precision.
Details Nurture Design. Details Nurture Brands.
The more you think about design, the more details you’ll give your product, and the more inspiration you’ll get from competitors. The importance of details will be discussed later.
Turning Competitor Library into an Inspiration Library
Every time I collect competitors, I feel inspired, but when I open the document again the next day, that inspiration is gone somewhere. In the past, I used to store competitors in Evernote and analyze each one individually, recording what I liked about it, why I liked it, and how to apply it in a project.
Over time, I discovered that this approach didn’t benefit other projects as much as I thought, and with many competitors, searching and filtering became very troublesome.
It wasn’t until someone recommended Eagle to me that I realized its powerful filtering and annotation features could instantly turn my competitor library into an inspiration library. Compared to the Evernote-style library, it was clumsy and had no elegance.
When browsing competitors, you can collect good ones in Eagle and record your thoughts as you go, making it easy to review and organize later.
Building an Image Material Library with Eagle
An image material library is all about collecting and filtering. Eagle has a rich collection method, allowing you to quickly collect images through copying and dragging. My steps for organizing and filtering are as follows:
- Find Materials. At first, I’ll think about the overall goal of this project and start collecting relevant materials.
- Tagging, Annotation, and Deletion. When browsing through the collected images, if you see one that sparks inspiration, you can immediately record your thoughts. In Eagle, you can use tagging or annotation to record your thoughts about an image. I usually use tagging to record my thoughts about specific elements of a design, while using annotation to record overall references to the project.
- Viewing Marked Content. Filter out the images that have been marked or annotated and analyze their commonalities and characteristics. This helps you identify what can be used for your own purposes.
- Setting Smart Documents and Quick Viewing. You can set up smart documents to quickly access frequently used types of images.
As a user who has only been using Eagle for less than half a year, I’m still exploring its features. These daily usage methods ~ hope they can inspire others.
Building a Text Material Library with Evernote
Although I mentioned earlier that Evernote is not suitable as an image material library, it’s actually being referred to as the “Evernote” of image management, which highlights its role in knowledge management. Evernote excels at collecting images, while Evernote excels at collecting text materials.
From 2013 when I started using Evernote, I began to collect more and more articles, only to delete them and start collecting again. This process made me feel like the elephant was too cumbersome, making it difficult to continue using.
“Cards can be knowledge bookmarks, its essence is that it’s a minimal information unit, greatly reducing cognitive burden“. The card format of notes gave me a big inspiration, but I didn’t use Evernote as the carrier at first. Instead, I used physical cards because they were portable and easy to query, but I eventually gave up on them. Later, I tried out Zotero and Mweb, with Zotero having a powerful search function but insufficient recording function, and Mweb only supporting Mac and iPhone. So in the end, I still chose to use Evernote.
After long-term usage, I discovered that the articles collected in Evernote were not knowledge, but rather burdens. To make them useful for myself, the content of cards should be related to my own experiences or practices. When flipping through old cards, you can also associate with your past emotions.
Now, after reading a collected article, I’ll write a card to record my gains, which may include a sentence that inspired me, a term, or an unconventional idea. At the end of the card, I’ll add a link to the original article, making it easy to view later. Cards are minimal information units, not seeking length.
In referencing different people’s Evernote usage methods, I realized that when getting experience from outside, what’s most important is my own perspective. No matter what others say, you should first consider whether it’s suitable for yourself. If you feel that something goes against your nature in the process, then you shouldn’t follow it. For example, dressing and makeup, you should first understand what style suits you. Tools and methods are more important to be adjusted according to actual feelings.
In knowledge management, practice is more important than method, creation is more important than collection. If you’re using something awkwardly, even the most advanced tools and methods cannot play their roles.
Inspiration and Plagiarism
When we talk about inspiration, we may wonder: isn’t borrowing heavily from others’ works just plagiarism?
Firstly, let’s clarify that whether it’s plagiarism or not depends on the author themselves. Anyone who wants to create with their heart won’t allow themselves to simply copy elements from someone else’s work. However, when you’re unsure about what details are needed for a design and don’t want to think deeply, you might end up copying everything without hesitation.
For example, when drawing a picture, you may have a clear scene and atmosphere in mind, but there are also many other details to consider such as composition, shape, color, texture, and contrast. During the creative process, if you’re aware of what details are needed for this work and roughly know what kind of effect you want to achieve, then inspiration gained from numerous works will help your target become clearer.
Any product can be broken down into countless details, just like the phrase “details give birth to design, details give birth to brand”. Only by clearly understanding how to design these details and why, can we make more use of inspiration and avoid being influenced by other works.
Conclusion
People who lack confidence in their own “feelings” should first recognize their own shortcomings in information collection and the limited objective information they possess. Even if someone can optimize things instantly, their “feeling” is not intuition but a vast knowledge reserve. “Feeling” is an ability that anyone can acquire through diligent study, rather than being innate.
Inspiration comes from where? People often say inspiration is a natural talent that not everyone possesses. But Mizuno Manabu tells us that inspiration originates from information collection.
Just like how big data storage can train machines to make decisions, when we collect information with a clear target and think about the reasons behind it, we can also generate our own inspiration and create excellent designs and products.
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