Inspiration Amid The AI Art Plague

In the age of AI, it can feel like it's hard to think for yourself, create for yourself and find inspiration.

The best way to fight back is to research, create, and keep learning to build your skills. If you're feeling stuck or uninspired, know that it's totally normal for inspiration to come and go; everyone experiences creative blocks sometimes. Just keep going and permit yourself to explore. So, without any further ado, here are some things that inspired ME this week, and hopefully it shows YOU where to look too :)

My playlist started to feel a little stale, and as much as I LOVE the artists in my record collection, I was searching for fresh inspiration. I created a new playlist and added my favourite songs, then added EVERY song Spotify recommended I add based on that. I then listened to the playlist and was surprised by how many of those songs ended up in my main playlist! This actually ended up being the inspiration behind our new “if you like… you will love…” series!

My team and I have shared our craziest and most delusional ideas. Sometimes it helps to plan the most unlikely ideas first and hone them back until you figure out what inspiration is behind them and what you are actually longing for; then we use that core idea to build our next project. It also helps us to get to know each other better and understand each person's strengths when planning creative projects. If you have an idea, act on it! I have spent the last month making merch concepts every time I think of something I personally want that doesn’t actually exist! Have I posted them anywhere? No, but I know that if this were something I wanted to consider dabbling in down the line, I would have built a portfolio of ideas. I am strengthening my creative muscles by letting myself consider what this would look like rather than letting it be a passing thought.

I have also enjoyed bad design experiments, bad video edits and playing around with all my creative apps to see what I can learn and what inspiration might hit. You may have seen a few articles recently that were designed as flipbooks; this happened after a day of playing around on Canva and deciding, "Hey, I actually want to see how people react to this experiment!"

It is no secret that I am DEEPLY inspired by 5SOS, and their recently released clubsos remix of Evolve has, of course, led to new ideas for me! I have played around with remixes by playing them on my guitar and singing along, thought more deeply about why songs might mix well, done some research on music theory and music production, and worked on naming what it is that I'm listening to and liking in a song! Similarly, this inspired me to take a deep dive into media studies. I'm talking video essays, audiobooks and my own dedicated research time!

In terms of my writing, I am drawn to expanding my vocabulary! I installed a widget on my phone that sends me notifications with vocab words, and I immediately write a paragraph in my notes app using that word. I also write every night for about an hour before I go to bed. The idea is to write exactly how I'm feeling so I can get used to putting my authentic thoughts and feelings into my work, and so I can work on being more descriptive and use my real feelings to inspire new creative work when I read it back.

I cannot emphasise the importance of the above paragraph enough! Your rawest feelings drive your creativity. For example, I was so unimpressed by all the overly polished AI content on my feed that I redid our logo using beads. I literally got the idea at midnight, shot out of bed, rearranged beads, and worked on the perfect scan until wayyyyyy too early in the morning! I also redid the cows as scribbled doodles and let my hatred of AI turn into something creatively freeing… the ability to make bad art without feeling judged; instead, messy feels human, not unprofessional!  

And my final tip? Screenshot everything! Write everything down! Save everything! anytime something inspires me I write it in my notes app, I take a photo of something tha tinspired me while shopping, i note down things my friends say that spark a thought, i bookmark youtube videos that made me consider an idea deeply, I save songs, social media posts, anything that first triggered an idea so that I can remember the thoughts and feelings that first inspired me to make in the first place!!

Honestly, one of the biggest obstacles can be the fear of being judged or not being "good enough," and I definitely feel it sometimes. But I've found that permitting myself to create just for the sake of it, even if it turns out awkward or imperfect, helps me move past perfectionism. Reminding myself that everyone worries about being judged at some point makes it easier to play and experiment, and that's often when I find the most inspiration. You also don’t have to share if you don’t want to! You have the freedom to create just for yourself, and honestly sometimes that is where the freedom comes in!!