What Inspires Me as a Designer?

Lilah Merie
3 min readDec 1, 2020

Oh boy. This is a super hard question to answer since there are soo many things that inspire me as a designer. Throughout my life, I have constantly struggled with finding myself. I have struggled with using my voice, sharing my opinions, letting myself be heard. However, once I started going to college, taking design classes, and forming relationships with professors and peers, I have slowly been able to find myself, and know what truly inspires me to do what I do. There are soo many things that inspire me as a designer, and there continues to be new things that inspire me as the months and years go on. This is just a few of them.

Like I had mentioned, I have a hard time voicing my opinions. Whether its about politics, religion, the universe, whatever you can think of. I struggle sharing my thoughts and feelings. However, once I started taking design courses, and putting out work into the world, I found a way to share my voice. A lot of the projects I have done over the years have had a lot of meaning into them. Whether it was a poster for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Building a Brand, making Voting Posters, and so much more. Each project lets us make it our own. And to me, that is soo cool. If we were given a project with strict guidelines, strict rules, it would all look the same. But having these open parameters allows us to go in the direction we each individually feel necessary. It allows us to speak openly on matters within our project, and express it through our designs. This helps us voice our opinions and feelings, in a more silent and respectful way!

Another thing that inspires me is just how much love and support I have from friends, family, and professors. I remember my senior year of high school, I started sharing with friends and family that I was considering going to school for art. I was instantly put down or questioned. Everyone instantly thought that I wouldn’t be good enough, its so competitive, or I wouldn’t make a living. But as the years have past, and I have openly shared tons of my work, people have grown to be unbelievably supportive. Being told that people are proud of me, or having people buy from my business, it is amazing. Being recognized and noticed is inspiring. It inspires me to continue learning. Just cause I am a senior in college, nearing my last few classes before I graduate, it doesn’t mean that I am done learning. There is so much more that I can learn and grow in. The fact that I am already being so supported shows me that it will grow even more with everything that I continue to learn, and continue to develop.

The last big thing that inspires me is just the fact that I can defy the odds. I can be successful in the future with my careers. This semester, I have had the opportunity to share some of my work to successful designers. I was noticed. After we shared our work, we were able to ask them questions about their careers. A lot of them had started their own businesses. They were hugely successful and well known companies. They shared how they were doubted when they were younger as well. How they were told that art wasn’t a good or smart career path. However, they built themselves up, worked hard, and made themselves known. That is beyond inspiring to me. It gives me hope and helps me know that I will be there someday, as well.

These are just some of the things that inspire me on a daily basis. There are a lot more, but I would have to write a novel to tell you about all of those! With everything going on in the world right now, especially when we are finding it hard to be creative and put out the work we know we can do, I think it is important to look back on and reflect all that personally inspires us. Lately, with the Pandemic and just having extra time to over think things, and be in my head, I have found it exceptionally hard to be the designer and student I know I can be. However, it has been unbelievably helpful to sit down and think about everything that inspires me and keeps me going as a designer. I think that is something we all don’t do as much as we should.

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Lilah Merie
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I am a Senior at University of Minnesota, Duluth studying Graphic Design!