I MOSTLY GET MY INSPIRATION FROM THINGS UNRELATED TO WHAT I DO.

Inspiration can come from anywhere and at any time. There’s a difference between inspiration, influence, and reference. When I’m asked what inspires me, I think people expect the answer to be more about a particular reference. For instance, going to a book to see how a certain style looks, that’s reference material; going through books or magazines and picking up ideas, that’s influence.

For me, inspiration is a spark out of nowhere, a leap of the imagination, often from a surprising source. I mostly get my inspiration from things unrelated to what I do.

It’s that moment of juxtaposition when the familiar meets the unfamiliar, the known meets the unknown, and your brain has to connect these things. If we make these inspirational connections, we can create things that spark people’s imaginations.

I love cereal. So, I guess I really took the line “play with your food” to heart when I made this piece. I haven’t used it yet. What can I say? I’m a huge cereal fan.

I was in Seattle in a toy store, and on the counter was a box with decal sheets for old model airplanes. I picked up a few and put them in an envelope for later reference. Doing something that referenced the decals was on my ideas list for probably seven years. Last year, the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada needed a poster for a sustainability event. They didn’t want it to be all green and leafy, so I looked at my list and decided it was time to use the decals.

A lot of my ideas come from wanting to work with particular materials. I’m into fur now. It’s showing up in some of my work, like this CalPoly poster I did. The medium can help develop the creative. It kind of speaks to you and inspires you to create what it wants to be.

I’m getting ideas all the time. They come from walking down the street, from watching a movie, from reading. I get a lot of sparks from reading. I’ll be reading an article and I’ll leap up and write something down. I have more ideas than I can execute. I keep a long “ideas” list that I categorize: film, clothing, graphics, and so on. These vary from grand ideas to little graphic things like “make something with sugar.” I used to keep my list of ideas in little notebooks and scraps of paper all over, but now I usually enter them into a text file on my computer. Some of the ideas have been sitting there for years.

When I get a project, I usually have an idea right away or overnight. Sometimes if I’m desperate, I’ll hunt through my list for the idea. But it usually pops into my head from some kind of logical or illogical association.

I guess what I do is have this mental and physical storehouse full of thoughts, words, and materials—and I’m always adding to it. I have more ideas than I’ll be ever able to use.

I always liked playing with sugar at the breakfast table when I was a kid. In fact, I still do it. I made a piece called “Indestructible” for Fox River Paper Company. I, of course, destroyed it by bumping into it. Stefan Sagmeister saw “Indestructible” and wanted something like it. That’s when I did “Things I have learned so far in my life.” I did six different versions of the same sentence in sugar. I did it without sketches, just freehand on white paper. I just let the sugar do what it wanted to do.

I spend a lot of time thinking. It’s really helpful for me. I was reading an article about the need for downtime and getting sleep. About how the time spent sitting around and staring at the sky is really important for people who need to be inspired, because they’re always scrambling for ideas. I’m what some would call kind of lazy. I like to just sit and stare at the forest, and that’s when I get some of my best ideas.

My best ideas come from the way I live my life. If I feed my life, it will give me ideas when I need them.

I have a number of materials sitting around waiting to be used. For example, I’m collecting dirt from all over the world: South Africa, Bali, Brazil, California. When the time comes, I’ll be ready to make something with the dirt. I have burgeoning collections of things that I can’t wait to use.