Side projects
Designer side projects serve as essential creative fuel when client work becomes draining. These personal experiments allow designers to explore unused ideas and regain excitement for their craft, regardless of commercial potential.
Our work is not easy. You need to stay excited all the time, and that is impossible. You need to find something that drives you—things that blow out some steam.
Side projects often play an important role in learning and growing my design skills; they allow me to explore new ideas or play around with old, unused ones.
Even when the times are not so great, you can’t be at your best all the time. You can’t start embracing that. We all have ups and downs; we all feel productive one day and coffee addict the next. Creativity is strange, and it is impossible to know when the idea will hit you.
Side projects make me happy and excited, even when I am completely stuck. I can easily shift to a side project and get my energy back.
It does not matter if you are working on new ideas or recycling some old ones that got stuck, just to prove you can do them. So go over your old notebook (yes, you need to have one) and start producing something. It is not important if something will grow out of it. Important is to finish it and ignore the money aspect.
Why Designer Side Projects Restore Creative Energy
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