Best of Intentions… Such is Life…

Right as you can see it’s been a while since my last blog post!

So not the best of starts as was intended, but as the title says such is life! So I started this blog to track my creative journey back to my passions of design, print and typography… with a little baking thrown in for good measure. And I have been good in some aspects, that being keeping up with following my passions, being creative and making steps in positive directions to helping me achieve my goals, the blip on the spectrum would be the lack of blog posts documenting this! Oops! But something I hope to rectify over the upcoming weeks/months!

So there are lots exciting things happening for me at the moment, firstly I finally finished at my 9-5 marketing job, swapped it for another one but I am about to swap this for a position in teaching game design. Although I’m no gamer (well not yet anyway!) I’m hoping it will be a fantastic experience and it is definitely a step in the right direction of what I want from my career. Also with my new teaching job also comes a permanent move to the North East which is where I’ve wanted to move for a while, I’m hoping this will free up a bit more time as I won’t be splitting my time between here and Yorkshire and I can get involved with some local design and craft stuff! So it’s all big changes at the moment but also very exciting!

Right enough of me babbling on… I guess the thing I most wanted to talk about in this blog was finding inspiration and sticking to your plans! The first I have managed to do relatively well and the latter I’ve been doing ok on, but not great as you can see from the lack of blog posts!

I think one thing I’ve learnt over this year is that if you are creative, its something that’s in you and you don’t lose it. If you’re like me and feel you’ve lost the confidence, you have to realise that you can get it back… Now I am not going to say that this is easy because it isn’t, every person is different! For me after, University I barely picked up a pen to draw with in 3 years, the only way I manage to gather up that confidence again was to actually start doing, start creating again!

I did this in a number of ways; firstly I got myself on a course run by The Graphic Design School, www.thegraphicdesignschool.com … I’m not saying this is for everyone but I wanted some kind of educational reinforcement that I was going in the right direction. There are lots of courses out there whether they are at College, University, workshops, tutorials or online courses like this one.

Another aspect I tackled was involving myself with online design websites and blogs… now there loads of websites and blogs on anything and everything you can imagine but I’ll share a couple of my favourite ones with you! Firstly Creative Boom www.creativeboom.co.uk this is a fantastic website with loads of useful tips, news and events going on throughout the country. Initially it was set up due to lack of online networking for us creative types and it definitely helps fill the void, I can’t recommend it enough!!

Now onto The Clear Minded Creative www.clearmindedcreative.com this blog when I discovered it back in January, it really spoke to me and was the original source of inspiration for my own blog. It discusses how a creative journey can sometime be a struggle in terms of sticking with deadlines and finding creative inspiration, whether you are a writer, artist, musician or designer I would highly recommend this blog… It makes you realise you are not alone in getting those creative blocks and offers practical advice, links and book reviews that can aid you in getting through the block and feeling more inspired!

So I’m making a new creative pledge and that is to stick to a regular blog posts, I’m hoping I can stick to one a week or every other week… But one thing is for sure there definitely won’t be another big gap like last time! Promise!