Almost all creatives are at one time or another stopped cold by a blank canvas. Your reasons for sitting down to create in the first place bend instantly to the will of the paper, and your thoughts scatter like startled birds from a tree. The blank wins, until you trick it or yourself into letting your thoughts resurface and take form.
Others have written tricks, techniques and mantras for getting past the crippling blankity-blank (like that?), but I take the easy way out path of least resistance - don’t start with a blank slate in the first place. Find something dirty to start with.
Embrace your Space Constraints
The best ideas I’ve ever had myself or heard from others have started on cocktails napkins and in the margins of unrelated papers. Think of it as embracing the constraint of limited space. You may want to say something in a thousand words, but you still have to start it; why not start when you only have space for 20? Got a design that needs 500 pixels to represent? See if you can pull out a corner of it in a 1-inch by 2-inch space.
If you’re extra daring, spill coffee on part of your 8.5 x 11 piece and paper, and write around the stain. Ok, maybe that’s too far, but the point is, try to think outside the blank.
Blatantly contextual footnote: The entry was conceptualized on a 5 3/4 x 81/2 sketchpad page that was already being used for laying out the homepage for this site.
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