Design and the Subconscious Mind

Posted July 29, 2009 in Creativity, Design with 2 Comments

Within every person is the power to create. Being a designer or an artist, that power seems easier to wield and make use of because we are visual learners and thinkers–we can “see” what we want to put on paper or in pixels. This article is based heavily on a belief system, which some of you may or may not agree with. Nevertheless, its an attempt to compare the work of designers and artists with a power that is within all of us.

Introduction to the Subconscious Mind

I’m sure many people have watched or at least heard of The Secret, and if you’re like me, you’ve practiced the Law of Attraction. In case you haven’t heard of either, the Law of Attraction is, well, a law, that states what you think about most, you attract—think positively, experience positive events, think negatively, experience negative events. This all happens through the use of your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind speaks to you through gut instincts and helps align events in the universe with what you think about most and attract. It’s not a religion, yet it shares many aspects with many religions and has a pretty heavy belief system. The subconscious mind knows an infinite amount of solutions to problems your conscious mind may never conceive.

When working on a design project, we’ve all experienced a dry spell in our creative juices at one point in our career. To help get our creative juices flowing again, we’ve either quit for the night, started work on a different project, or took a breather by going outside or watching tv until we get that “aha!” moment. Part of the reason why our creative juices dry out is because we’ve lost “communication” with the subconscious mind. The conscious, logical part of our mind steps in the way and creates a block, causing us to get frustrated, looking at a blank screen. On the other hand, we’ve all experienced that moment when we’ve been working on a design and make a happy mistake—a twitch of the wrist, a wrong keystroke, picking a different color than what we originally intended, or even coming across a new resource at the exact moment we need it—with the end result of creating something better than what we originally intended. That’s the work of the subconscious mind.

Creativity, brought to You by the Subconscious Mind

Repetition affects our subconscious mind to help us remember or experience what we want, it helps us learn. When we do research for a design project, we peruse through CSS galleries, magazines and other industry-specific collateral. Researching allows us to focus on the images, designs and information related to the project, unknowingly letting it bake itself into our subconscious mind. When we attempt to design a logo, we start out by sketching 20 or 30 different ideas, none of which really appeal to us and we let it go and walk away. This is because the creative, subconscious mind is still thinking, while the logical, conscious mind is trying to figure things out. Each sketch is a new thought drilled into our subconscious, and at the same time, a conscious attempt to create what our subconscious is thinking (confusing, huh?).

Many times, an idea strikes us in the middle of the night or right after we wake up. When we sleep, our subconscious mind takes over and processes all the information it has accumulated throughout the day, some of which we dream about. Upon waking and falling asleep are the two moments our conscious and subconscious minds are in close communication, which explains why our best designs come to us unexpectedly at those times. We see an image of what direction our design should take and we just “know” that’s the one.

My Own Personal Experience

A couple years ago, I pursued a pet project called Superhuman Mind. It was a website collecting the best of the best articles on self improvement and the power of the mind. When designing the logo, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted. Something planet-like to portray the universe? Or maybe some type of stylized brain? I went though about 100 sketches or more and nothing was even remotely close to what I was looking for. So I stopped sketching and instead let it fester in the back of my mind. About two days later, I woke up with an image of it in my head, the final logo which is shown below. To my surprise, its extremely simple and yet resembles everything I was looking for—there’s a little bit of a planet symbolizing the universe, the negative space in the icon looks like a stylized brain to symbolize the mind, and there’s also a little hint of a yin-yang symbol in it as well, tying it to religious beliefs.

In case you couldn’t tell from this article, I’m a believer of the power of the mind. As a result, I sometimes meditate on designs, especially when nothing comes to me initially. It helps me create my best work, after all what better thing to trust than your own intuition and power of the universe around you?

As I said at the beginning, this article is heavily based on a belief system. Some people will get it, some won’t. Have any questions, thoughts or experiences you’d like to share? Leave them below.