I just recently watched two YouTube videos on subliminal persuation, by Derren Brown (a mentalist). The subject of the videos was marketing and advertising. As a company that does brand marketing and design as well, I was astounded at what he demonstrated. You'd probably like to watch it before reading on.
What happened in the videos is that Derren used subliminal persuation to 'prime' the creative minds of two marketing-guys. Then he put them under time pressure to design a brand, slogan, the whole thing... resulting in a very predictable design / idea.
It really made me wonder how big the influence is of our daily impressions on design.
Perhaps time pressure is the key to what happened, half an hour is nothing in terms of a creative process, especially when brainstorming is involved. Our process is to create several designs, adjust them until they rock, then put them away. The next day the designs are the same, but the feeling about the designs may differ. That is when we decide to go with a certain design, modify it, or completely redo it.
I believe that creativity is the process of creating something new, fresh, exciting. That process might include combining existing designs and thoughts into something different, still making it new, fresh, exciting...
What's your opinion on design and inspiration?