A lot of you have probably seen the book, Never Sleep:  Graduating to Graphic Design, floating around the bookstores, and after flipping through it and reading some of the essays I was really impressed.  Each designer wrote their unique transition from student designer to successful professional designer.  The essays that really caught my attention were the ones that dealt with “thinking differently.”

This excerpt comes from the first short essay, 4 Steps to Idiocy And 1 Step to Sheer Genius (you can read it for free on their site):

I realized that I was an idiot. Even though I thought I was a good designer, generating copious creative ideas at will, I was actually severely limited by my built-in biases. My brain was automatically short-cutting to solutions for my work without exploring the range of possibilities available, one of which could be brilliantly unexpected and effective.

The second excerpt comes from, Be A Two Headed Monster:

To stand out, you need two heads. One is the head you fill with all the fundamental skills you learned in school. Exacto cutting, font spotting, use of the word “juxtaposition,” etc. This is the head everyone can fill if they take the standard creative professional path. But to really kick-ass and stand out at the party, you need to develop a second head which you should fill with the unique you.