Creativity on a Deadline

Anyone in the design profession knows the feeling. You’ve been sitting for what seems like forever, staring at a sketch page or a piece of trace with pen in hand, but the ideas just won’t come. Time is deliberately ticking away, the end of the day is approaching, but the fact remains that you’re stuck.

As a rising fifth-year architecture student at Virginia Tech, I am all too familiar with the pressures of being creative on a deadline. On those occasions when the ideas flow freely, there is nothing I love more than the sound of trace paper ripping off the roll as I fervently sketch out concepts for a new design. But there can also be nothing more miserable than sitting at my studio desk, after my friends have gone home to make spaghetti and my afternoon coffee is cold, waiting for inspiration to hit and dreading the long night ahead.

We are creative people. The ideas are in there, bouncing around in our heads, but we just have to become more efficient at getting them out. So as I prepare to graduate and enter the “real world” of practicing architecture, I am determined to keep up a few of my architecture student habits just to keep my creative juices replenished and always have a fresh supply of new ideas waiting in the wings. Here are the top 5:

1.  Always carry a sketchbook, and use it!

2.  Look for inspiration everywhere

3.  Get feedback as often as possible

4.  Keep up my other creativity-inducing hobbies, like water-color painting

5.  Drink lots of coffee!

 – Becky Cook