It’s easy to get in the creative zone when you’re feeling inspired, but what about the rest of the time?
As a graphic designer, the ability to consistently work on your craft without waiting for inspiration to strike will enable you to refine your skills and regularly create work you’re proud of.
The next time you’re facing that dreaded creative block, having some go-to design projects ready to go can help you get out of your rut and find inspiration instead of waiting for it to find you. Browsing graphic design portfolios and magazines can help you find project ideas, but if you want some ideas you can get started on right away, you’ve come to the right place.
Whether you’re a student or a working designer, finding time between assignments and work gigs to work on practice projects is a powerful way to keep your portfolio fresh and your skills sharp. We’ve scoured the internet for 7 projects for graphic designers that are sure to help you find your creative flow.
1. Unexpected Pop Culture Inspiration
When designing this punchy cover for architecture magazine AA, Paris-based designer Josephine Ohl found unexpected inspiration in classic films.
The theme of the issue was New York, Tokyo, and Paris. Representing each city with a creature, Ohl chose to conceive of designs using King Kong for New York, Godzilla for Tokyo, and a rooster—a traditional French symbol—for Paris.
Creating the images separately, she then silkscreened them onto the cover, resulting in a unique object through this highly tactile process.
Pop culture references like these make for instantly recognizable and relatable imagery, adding an element of playfulness to a design concept. To further take inspiration from Ohl for your next project, consider experimenting with mixed media, even if it’s outside of your usual wheelhouse. For example, if you’re primarily a digital designer, bringing some physical elements into your work to break from routine and introduce new materials could be the breath of fresh air your creative block needed.
2. A Unique Printed Book
Books are some of the earliest sources of graphic design we have, and they remain challenging, stimulating design projects to this day.
Toronto design studio Fook Communications demonstrates in this table of contents how even a page with relatively limited information can enable designers to experiment and push boundaries by playing with layout, hierarchy, color, white space, and other design principles.
Adding a printed project to your online portfolio website is also a good way to showcase your product design skills. Creating and photographing a physical piece like a guidebook will add texture and variety to your online portfolio, providing some visual excitement in a sea of digital content.
3. A Creative Coloring Book
Portugal-based designer Mariana Malhao’s online portfolio is full of playful projects, but this coloring book definitely stands out.
Malhao has lent her design skills to a range of projects, from jewelry to ceramics, all of which express her unique, lively style.
Including fun self-directed projects like this in your online portfolio demonstrates that you’re able to come up with strong ideas outside of a set design brief, communicating the highly valued skill of creativity as well as your passion for making.
Design projects don’t all have to be serious, so if your style lends itself to whimsical projects, creating something for kids can be an effective way to show your skills. The same approach could be used to create a comic or conceptual drawing for a toy, for example. And if your work is more serious, no rule says you can’t create a satirical piece, like instructions to an imagined object.
4. A Reinterpretation of a Classic Work
Graphic designer Chelsea Majuri made a creative edition of Walter Benjamin’s classic text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Majuri’s version of the book is made up of fifteen booklets, which each contain one of the essay’s informative chapters, making the writing both “approachable and enjoyable in short windows of time,” as the designer explains.
Majuri has added repeating patterns custom-designed by herself, as well as etchings by Rembrandt. These design choices relate to the ideas about reproduction of artworks expressed in Benjamin’s writing.
This project enabled Majuri to demonstrate both her design and production skills since creating a book requires additional skills in preparing print files, selecting paper stock, and binding.
Creating a custom edition of a favorite book is a simple yet challenging way to show off your know-how. Another fun option? A redesign of a classic album cover.
5. Postcards With a Message
Designer Aly Dodds created a set of charming hand-illustrated postcards focusing on femininity, women’s rights, and the power of speaking up. The artist created this project to provide a platform for “babes of all genders everywhere to stand up to their elected officials and demand the protection of women’s reproductive rights.”
Advancing a cause you care about can be a great source of inspiration for a personal project, or as an act of volunteering for an org you believe in.
If you’re not feeling particularly political, you can take the same approach to making a set of greeting or thank you cards.
6. Posters Illustrated With the Alphabet
Graphic designer Hugo Jourdan used nothing but the 26 letters of the alphabet to create a series of 26 striking minimal posters.
When motivation is lacking, returning to simple forms or colors can be an effective way to reconnect with your creativity. Instead of getting overwhelmed with sources of inspiration, focusing on minimal elements allows you to experiment with the most fundamental elements of design: form, size, color, and placement. These constraints can help you focus on technique and visual balance. Counterintuitively, working within limited parameters can ignite creativity when inspiration is in low supply.
7. A product label using brand materials
American designer Wake Coulter got creative when devising a brand identity for ØsterGRO, a large urban farm on a Copenhagen rooftop. In search of a design that “visually evoked the colors and typography of Danish farmstands,” Coulter decided to use potato prints in his work. The result is a series of labels and brand materials that represent ØsterGRO’s identity in a fun and unexpectedly meta way.
Let this project inspire you to think outside the box too, and explore ways you can use your subject or brand elements in an unconventional way to create something fresh.
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Inspired By These Graphic Design Projects For Your Portfolio? Here’s What To Do Next
Sharing your work is essential to growing your graphic design career. Once you create a few original projects based on these ideas, be sure to add them to your graphic design portfolio website.
Don’t have one yet? Format is a website builder designed with creative professionals in mind. With Format, you can create a beautiful, functional portfolio powered with a range of back-end tools to support your creative business, so you can confidently focus on putting your best graphic design work forward.
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