Being Creative Under Pressure

By Sonia Mansfield

Maintaining your creative drive while staring down a deadline is one of the biggest challenges in graphic design. These three simple tips will help you to overcome the pressure and create great graphic design without stress.

Stay In Your Chair

Stephen King has often attributed his prolific writing career to a simple strategy: he stays in his chair. When he sits down to write, he stays in place purposefully and reminds himself that it is his job to produce words. By staying at his keyboard, Stephen King can finish several bestsellers in the time most would-be novelists would spend waiting for the muse to strike.

This is a perfect strategy for graphic design. During crunch time, designers who wait nervously for inspiration to strike are doing themselves a disservice. Creativity becomes more difficult as time slips away. The best way to keep yourself calm and creative under pressure is to keep your pencil moving and your mouse clicking—you’re guaranteed to make more progress in a day than a designer who paces around an unused drawing board.

Make Lists

Even if you will yourself to work, the breadth of a graphic design project can be daunting. You may find yourself caught in a loop of hesitation over false starts or insurmountable tasks. If so, it’s time to make the power of the list work for you.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry once told an interviewer that when she has writer’s block, she makes a list of ten comic strip topics that she could write about. This helped her mobilize her work efforts, and made it easy to choose the best idea. You can apply this to graphic design by making a list of ten ideas, or perhaps ten thumbnails. Don’t worry if your ideas seem silly or outrageous! A good design idea is bound to come to light.

You can also use lists again to break big tasks into smaller ones. This will put your graphic design process into perspective and help you to manage your time. For example, completing a project in one day may seem impossible, but, if you break it down into a list like this, the task looks more more managable:

1. Thumbnail ten designs; choose the best to pursue. (1 hour)
2. Refine best design (finish mockup before lunch)
3. Implement design according to medium of choice (all afternoon)

Hold yourself to the times you’ve set out in the list and you’ll make your deadline with minimum stress.

Treat Yourself Well

Professional graphic design can be demanding, especially around crunch time. Put in the time you need, but keep it in check! You’ll work better, faster, happier and smarter if you don’t skip on meals and sleep.

Time management and task management are no good without stress management. Too much stress and fatigue will make it hard to produce good graphic design. Just as an athlete eats well and sleeps well before a marathon, make sure you get the food and rest you need to perform to the highest standards.

Author Information

Sonia Mansfield is the content editor for PsPrint and editor for the PsPrint Blog. She likes to write, do yoga and make nerdy “Star Wars” and “Simpsons” references. PsPrint is an online printing solutions company, which you can follow on Twitter and Facebook.

4 Reasons For Using Ordered Lists

I thought I’d have some fun today by sharing with you four reasons why you should use lists (on occasion) for your articles. If writing ordered lists is all that you do, then this article is definitely not for you except perhaps to serve as a warning. For the rest of us, including people who have an aversion to this type of writing style (myself included), lists can’t hurt, in fact they can bolster your site when used judiciously.

What Are Ordered Lists?

"Not another ordered list!"

Ordered lists are just that – numbered information to help you accomplish a task. Cooks have long used ordered lists such as when referencing how to cook a boneless ham or bake an old-fashioned apple crumb pie. Recipes require readers to follow each number in sequence, but no such restriction is mandated for the article writer who uses ordered lists.

So why use ordered lists?

Let us count the reasons –

1. Easy To Read – When a visitor comes to your blog or website, what does he find? Unfortunately, so many blogs appear to be “busy” with widgets, ads, and pop-ups obscuring the landing page. That is why I recommend people limit the number of distractions readers face, with an emphasis on content above all else. Assuming that you wrote an attention getting headline, the next thing visitors look at is your content which, when numbered, encourages a quick scan of what you wrote. You’ve attracted your readers thus far, now they’ll want to know what your “Top Ten” or “7 Best” list has to say.

2. Simple To Assemble – Lists are generally very easy to assemble and are especially helpful for the writer who has a difficult time piecing together complete articles. Instead of having to rely on a strong body of work (which is everything between your opening paragraph and your conclusion), writers need only consider each point and then elaborate. Declarative sentences are sometimes used which means that you can state an idea and leave it at that.

3. Ready For Reuse – If your list is especially helpful, such as offering a unique perspective on solving a problem or raising awareness for a particular issue, you’ll increase the chances that others will link to your article. Ordered lists are great for “how to” articles, informational pieces which outline how to accomplish a particular task.

4. Advantageous For SEO – Assuming that people like your list, are willing to link to it, and you offer your readers material that is truly helpful, your ordered list articles should achieve PageRank, which is still a mark of success for any article. Of course, linking out to relevant sites within your list is important. And, sharing your list through all of the important social media sites will go far in helping your cause, so don’t leave SEO to chance – put it to work to increase your chances for success.

What I don’t like about ordered lists are when they dominate a site. While I do expect to come across a greater number of lists when I visit “how to” sites, they shouldn’t be used on niche blogs all that often. Why? Because your readers will figure that you either can’t write or that you’re relying too much on one of the easiest writing styles out there. In other words, you’ll be perceived as being lazy. Ouch!

Further Reading

7 Things You Need to Know About Writing Lists That Work (Copyblogger)

Blogging With Lists, Part 1: An Overview (Sarah Jo Austin)

Online Technical Writing: Lists

See Also – Your Blog Has Died And I Really Miss It! (6 Warning Signs That Your Blog Is In Trouble)