My art professors are so afraid students will copying previous projects that they don’t provide enough inspiration for their assignments. My favorite professor would provide 40 pictures of previous project that were great examples of her desired outcome. Because she gave so many examples, I don’t remember one student who reused ideas, the 40 were a diverse enough pool that it inspired students to come up with a new unique idea. If she had only shown three examples, I believe she might have gotten a combination of them back, not a genuine new idea but her examples inspired new ideas, direction and helped us understand her expectations. I never felt the examples limited my imagination but launched it. I was always excited and teaming with ideas as I left her class to start a new projects. Many times my art professors don’t define the rules of the project well enough for me to be inspired or have a clue what they are looking for. I don’t feel I have the tools to know what is good designs, to be able to find inspiration from existing material. I’m afraid I will pick a bad example and repeat bad habits not great ones. I always worry the foundation of my design is not solid enough and that my professors will not be able to critic my project enough to make it great.
Inspiration
This was written by Kate Welch. Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2013, at 6:23 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
3 Comments
I always liked when professors would give several examples of previous projects. Not only does it give me a better sense of what the professor is looking for in the assignment, but it gives me a better understanding of how to use my own creativity to design. It also helps me learn whatever concept I am being taught. The more you are exposed to something, the more you learn.
I completely agree. In photography, we dont really have that problem though. Alot of my professors overflow us with a bunch of different photographs that it gets to the point thats its just too much. But the paranoia teachers have of NOT COPYING a previous idea really takes away from inspiring us to make the next big thing
It’s true. I love to have a little push, and having examples, especially STUDENT examples helps a lot. I can see an example of Milton Glaser’s work as inspiration for a poster design, but seeing someone so famous as my only example is incredibly intimidating. Seeing other student work helps me relax and kind of set the bar for what I am trying to achieve. Sure, I’d love to design the next I Heart NY, but the EXPECTATION I should intimidates rather than inspires. Seeing clever student work reminds me that if they can do it, I can do it, and I try even harder.
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