How to draw from nature (and profit from it)

Creative people are often credited with having amazing imaginations, and having it all “in their heads.” But the best of them draw inspiration from outside their heads. Sure, you can look around the office—or the office parking lot—for things to inspire that next creative piece. But the best input, even in this tech-enabled age, comes from Mother Nature. 
 
In this article, we’ll explore the value of exploring. We’ll give you good places to look and listen. And we’ll see how these natural wonders—some of them huge, others minuscule—can improve everything from layouts to logos to literature. 
 
What’s “natural”?
 
For our purposes, “natural” is anything that’s not man-made. Sure, you can be pretty awed by a skyscraper, a soaring suspension bridge, or the flowing lines of an exotic automobile, but the fact is that someone else beat you to it. And there’s a very good chance that they weren’t looking at other man-made objects for their inspiration. They were going back to the original source. Back to nature. 
 
Engineers do this all the time. They busily study spider webs for both their structure and their chemistry. They look at birds and insects to devise airplanes and drones. They peer into plants for new sources of medicines. 
 
This is not to say that artists have ignored nature! But when you get into the business of art—the profession of creative services—it’s much easier to get sidetracked. You’re designing a logo; what do you do? You probably scour the internet for other logos. You need to choose its colors; what do you do? You probably consult a color wheel or Pantone swatch-book.
 
But what didn’t you do? Set foot outside your office.
 
The discipline of looking 
 
It would be nice if you could book a jungle cruise for that next layout assignment. But no one does; it’s impractical. Still, even if you’re in a high-rise office in a major city, you can find natural inspiration, because nature refuses to be walled off. 
 
But before you venture outside, grab a notebook. (You can use the note-taking app on your mobile phone, too. Whatever’s comfortable for you.) And write down, at the top of the page, what it is you’re seeking to inspire. What’s the broad-strokes vision for this assignment? Do you seek a calming tone for a layout or copy? Are you looking—or rather, listening—for organic rhythms to apply to a jingle or soundtrack? 
 
The point is, this is not, literally or figuratively, a walk in the park. It’s an assignment. It’s work. Your time will be limited. You have things to accomplish. You need to get good input. Importantly, you don’t want to be distracted or have your mind wander from the task at hand, which is especially easy when you slip away from your desk to, say, a secluded spot in a park. 
 
Vary your scale
 
Where you go for your observations will depend upon your workplace. It could be the aforementioned park. If you work from home, it could be your backyard. If there’s a body of water nearby, whether a river, lake, or the ocean, that can be ideal, since so many habitats converge at that spot. 
 
Now, get ready to observe, and take notes. 
 
A convenient way to go about this is to divide your “search area” into categories or sectors. Examples include: 

• Big and small. “Big” things include clouds, trees, expanses of water or tracts of land. “Small” means details like veins of leaves, blades of grass, grains of sand, the locomotive patterns of ants. 

 

• High and low. “High” will keep you focused in the sky or among the treetops. “Low” will aim you toward the ground. 

 

• Left to right. Like a movie camera, you can “pan” your way across your environment. 

 
All of these are ridiculously simple. That makes them easy to follow. Thing is, they represent discipline. They’ll keep you focused on the task at hand. 
 
Remember: Your time is limited. This is like a brainstorming session, and one of the cardinal rules of brainstorming is “Go for volume.” You want to walk away from this with a lot of notes. 
 
We think written notes are ideal, because they capture what you’re thinking while you’re observing. Of course, you can supplement them with photos you take, videos you shoot, or sounds you record. But they’re more like raw data (devoid of your interpretive input), plus they’re now converted to a technical format, effectively separating you, by one layer, from the source. So they’re good, but not great. 
 
Put your work to work
 
Once you have your notes with you back in the office, compare them to the assignment at hand. You’ll be impressed by what you discover. Here are some examples to whet your appetite for this type of approach: 

• You’d originally considered consulting a color wheel or swatch-book for that logo. But then you saw the clever countershading of a bird in the park: a bluebird has a buff gray chest, with a rust-colored band, complimenting its nearly iridescent blue back. It’s a beautiful combination, one you wouldn’t have found otherwise. And yet there it was, right in front of you. 

 

• You’d started blocking out that page layout quite literally, with rectangles as placeholders for the big sections. But seeing how that tree grows up (predictably), with that one huge bough growing out (surprisingly), and the way that gravity pulls down on the smaller branches while their leaves pivot in one direction to face the sun, you see an entirely new—and better—way of laying out that page. 

 

• Seeing the cap of a cumulus cloud growing in the hot sun, you get exciting new ideas for a video transition effect. Ditto for the way that entire trees seem to ripple in the wind when their leaves all bend in synchronized waves.

 

• Squinting at the sunlight glinting off the surface of a puddle, the light is refracted by your eyelashes, suggesting both colors and a crosshatch pattern you can apply to that pending project. (See our entire article on "Squinting to See Clearer.")

 

• That mockingbird—showing off for a prospective mate—just reeled off ten different original tunes, which you recorded on your cell phone. Five of them are jingle-worthy. 

 
One other way
 
Some people might think that “slipping outdoors to observe” is either a luxury or an excuse to goof off. But the quality of the results is inarguable. 
 
If you can’t afford the time or effort to do it yourself, there is another way. Ask us. The examples we cited above are real; and we can harness just as much creative energy from Mother Nature, for you. Contact us today to discuss that pressing creative challenge. 

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