Creative inspiration is for the birds

You’ll be amazed
 
If you toil in creative services, you’re constantly searching for new sources of inspiration. Sure, you can keep tabs on the latest trends, but that’s effectively tracking other people’s work.
 
So you need to think outside the box. Outside the computer screen. And outside your office. (Or cubicle, bull-pen, what-have-you.) 
 
We devoted an entire article, and it’s a good one, on drawing inspiration from nature. It’s an ideal starting point. It’s also very very broad. You can select a single aspect or denizen of the natural world and derive a ton of inspiration from it. 
 
That’s what we’re going to do in this article. Don’t worry: This isn’t some academic exercise or flight of fancy. All of this is strictly business. It’s about nailing that next assignment in a way that those trend-setters—and certainly followers—haven’t yet perceived. They might say that the approach we’re about to pitch is for the birds. And they’d be more right than they can imagine. 
 
Look up
 
We confess to being bird nerds here at Copel Communications. But we don’t see that as a liability. To the contrary, it’s an opportunity. Not only for us, but for sharing with you. 
 
“But how,” you might ask, “does bird-watching, or ornithology, help you create a layout for a direct mailer?” How can it help you with a website design? A home-page video? Or any other of the multitude of creative assignments you’re typically handed? 
 
The answer, quite simply, is “A lot more ways than you might think.” 
 
The important thing here is to work backward. Start with the birds. Do lots of exploring, looking, listening, researching. Step out of that stress-box and immerse yourself in the avian world. Soak it all in. The more you do, the easier the assignment will become. Bonus: It will be more fun. 
 
Depending on where you live, and the time of year, the birds in your neighborhood will vary greatly. That doesn’t matter. Manhattan is known for its pigeons—but said pigeons have attracted a dedicated population of peregrine falcons. If you’re in the burbs, you’re surrounded by the usual suspects: Robins, starlings, various types of sparrows, jays. 
 
Some species are more common than you might imagine. Take turkey vultures. We used to watch them in old western movies; they’d always be circling that dying cowboy in the desert. Turns out, however, that they’re pretty much everywhere; they’re easily the most successful vulture species on earth, and dominate the entire western hemisphere. 
 
Crows are also wildly successful birds. And, for the purposes of this article, helpfully ubiquitous. Like turkey vultures, they have their share of detractors, but that’s simply because they’re misunderstood. 
 
Some fun facts about the two species above, just to get your juices flowing: 

• Crows are astonishingly smart. Some species even make tools (take that, chimps). They’re also very social, often roosting in huge colonies. 

 

• Turkey vultures are often maligned for spreading disease. In fact, the opposite is true. By consuming carrion, they rid the landscape of nasty pathogens like anthrax. 

 

• Turkey vultures are also among the most efficient flyers on earth. Watch them circling, riding a column of thermals, and count how long they go without so much as a single wingbeat. 

 
Of course, in the spring and summer, especially as you head south, you’ll see more colors and be treated to more songs. Brilliant yellow goldfinches and warblers. Dazzling iridescent indigo buntings. Even common birds can dazzle: Cardinals, blue jays, and mockingbirds (we love their Latin name: Mimus polyglottos, for “many-tongued mimic”), with their endless vocal inventiveness, make them the Mozarts of the avian world. 
 
How to observe
 
Sure, you could hide in a woodland blind with a $5,000 pair of Nikon binoculars. But when you’re pressed, simply walk out to the parking lot, or even look out the window. And then pay attention: 

• Don’t take “shape” for granted. Everything from wingspan to beak shape serves a purpose. Look at the streamlining. Study the feet. 

 

• Observe behavior. Some birds soar; others flap. Some walk; others hop. Black-capped chickadees can be coaxed to eat from your hand. Great blue herons, on the other hand, will give you a nasty look before flying far away from you. 

 

• Study colors and patterns. Few birds are monochromatic like crows. Most have species-specific patterns; many also exhibit gender-specific colors, with the males generally splashier than the females. Some patterns are intricate, such as the mottled spots on a flicker; others are subtle, like the shading of a bluebird. 

 

• Listen for calls and songs. If you’re new to this, you might be surprised that the same bird may have several totally different calls. It’s easier to find a singing bird among the branches in winter, when the trees are bare, than it is during the warmer months. Pay attention to the songs: How many notes? Ascending or descending? How long of a pattern before it repeats? Does a nearby bird of the same species answer? If so, can you tell the individuals apart? 

 
You can take notes if you like. You can make sketches. Recordings. Snap photos or videos. Whatever helps you capture what is new and interesting to you.
 
Make it pay
 
It’s simply not feasible to take a half-day field trip for this kind of exercise when you’ve got assignments on your plate and deadlines looming. But you can easily sneak out for, say, 15 minutes. You can just as easily layer this activity into a lunch break. 
 
Now’s the time to put all this newfound bird inspiration to work for you. If you did the first part—what we’d described above—correctly, then the second part—applying it to specific creative assignments—will be much easier than you might expect: 

• What about that direct mailer? Do you now perceive a novel form-factor for it? Might you employ die-cutting to create an original shape? Might you proportion it and fold it in a new, organic manner, so that it opens up, “spread eagle”? 

 

• What about that website design? Sure, you can start with a template. But we’ll bet you’d never considered a color palette of buff, rust, and royal blue until you watched an Eastern bluebird sitting atop a fence. 

 

• What about that home-page video? You were probably considering a linear approach before, but after seeing that robin fly by—not by continually flapping its wings, but rather by alternating between strong flaps and folded-wing coasting—you realize you could purposely alternate the pace of the editing in a strong, heartbeat-like fashion that will provide subtle organic energy. Similarly, you can structure its voiceover in a fact/response fashion, inspired by the one bird that sang from a nearby tree, only to be answered, slightly differently, by its companion further away. 

 
These are admittedly subtle applications. But the important point is that they’re new. They’re a nice, fun, and totally free way to bring another dimension to that next creative assignment. 
 
And just in case you need another bird-brain on your side, well, call us. We certainly practice what we peep. 

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