Dose of Thunder

Designing in the rain. A rainy, dreary dark Friday can make you rather unenthusiastic about your work especially in the creative field. Time to pull out some mood changing bright colors and see if we can sweep some life into this morning. Yellow, anyone? A Sabres losing skid at 8 games isn't helping anyone's mood either. The jubilation following a win would be nice on a morning like this.

Does mood effect your designing, your creativity? Do you design better when you are in a good mood? Is it harder to come up with fresh exciting ideas if you are in a bad mood? Psychology experts will tell you (and there is numerous articles online about this) that good health and good moods go together... so it would seem to reason that a good mood promotes good design. But when your are a design professional (did he say 'professional'?) it is hard to fit your mood into your schedule. Sometime you have to produce whether the weather (or your current mood because it it) promotes creativity.

So how do we change our mood to promote good design? Play some upbeat music? Turn on all the lights? Go for a walk? Call it a day? Peruse some design books and look at some good designs... will that be enough to change the doldrums into exciting and fun design.

While working on some print ads I reminding of something I read on the AIGA website a few months back- "Good design connects with people." It is more than catching someone's eye as they page thorough a newspaper or magazine-- once you caught their attention can you change their behavior? Good design makes the viewer take action. Marketers like that the 'call to action' statement in advertising. Good ads, and good design make people take notice, make them want to buy a product, employ the service or think differently about a thought or idea.

So it would make sense that designing while in a good mood will make the process more successful. What about photographers? Do they take better pictures when they are in good moods? What about illustrators or computer programmers? Does a good mood enhance their code writing skills. Can a good mood promote better problem solving?