grey.jpgHere’s a good tip one of my professors told the class, clean up your screen! He didn’t mean to actually CLEAN it (although mine really needs it haha) but, studies have shown that you actually lose your creative ability when using a computer, and even more so when it full of all sorts of tabs, icons, and boxes, and whatever else. A great shortcut in the Adobe programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) is to just hit the “TAB” key. All your palettes will disappear, which cleans up all the clutter and makes it easier to concentrate on your work. Another idea is to create your own work window. What that mean you say? Well, it depends on what program you are using…

PhotoshopIn Photoshop (after you have a document open) just hit “F” and cycle through the different view modes until you get one that you like. I like using “Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar.” Again, this helps to make it easier to concentrate on your work.

AIIn Illustrator pressing the “F” key does the same thing as in Photoshop. But, Illustrator makes it possible to take it one step further for that awesome creativity scenario. After selecting your favourite screen mode select the rectangle tool and create a dark grey box with no stroke that covers everything, zoom out to make it easier. Next, draw a white box over top of the grey area that’s the proper size of your document. Next, to take it that one step further, go to View > Hide Artboard. Hiding the artboard will get rid of the black outline of your document. This makes it easier to concentrate on your work; you’d be surprised how annoying that outline is ;). Lock that layer and create a new one to continue with your work. Although it takes a little bit longer of a set-up time, losing those black lines, palettes, and other annoyances your brain can concentrate more on the creative aspect of your work.

Note: A dark grey background is the best colour to get your creative juices flowing. My professor also suggested, as he does this himself, to cut out a piece of dark grey board, enough to see the monitor, and tape the rest around the monitor to create a sort of border to block everything out. As if to “trick” your mind into thinking you’re not on a computer. Of course you can always just buy a second monitor and have all the pallets and stuff on that one, but that costs money, and that’s money I don’t have :P.

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