About Inspicacity
A reason to sit down and start
Inspicacity is a studio for people who want to make things: hobbyists, students and working designers who could use a regular push to try something new.
The blank page is the hard part.
Most people who like to make things are not short of skill. They are short of a starting point. A brief, a rule or a single word is often all it takes to turn an idle evening into a finished piece.
So that is what we make: small, well-made pushes in four formats, each pitched so you can start today with whatever is on your desk.
Short and open
Creative prompts
A prompt is the smallest push we make. It is not a brief and it does not care what medium you pick. Paint it, write it, photograph it, build it out of the recycling.
Good prompts leave room. We write them so that ten people get ten different pieces, and so that you can finish something in an evening if that is all the time you have.
Try this one
Draw the view from the last window you looked out of, but only with shapes you could cut from paper.
Pencil, ink or tablet
Drawing challenges
Drawing challenges add a rule to the prompt: a time limit, a single line, one colour, the wrong hand. The rule is the point. It stops you polishing and makes you look.
They suit a sketchbook habit. Ten minutes on the train counts. So does a full page that takes a weekend.
Try this one
Ten minutes, one continuous line: draw a mug without lifting your pen.
Prompt craft
AI art challenges
AI art challenges are about direction, not luck. Each one sets a constraint, such as a palette, a period, a composition or a mood, and asks you to get the tool to honour it.
Show your working if you like: the prompt, the edits, the version you threw away. The interesting part is usually the steering.
Try this one
Make a travel poster for a place that does not exist, using only three colours.
Made to a brief
Design contests
A design contest gives you a client who never emails back: a short brief with a name, an audience and a format. You make the thing as if it were going to print.
They are good practice for working designers and a gentle first brief for students. Seeing the same brief solved twenty ways teaches more than any tutorial.
Try this one
Design a label for a jar of jam made by a lighthouse keeper.
Ready when you are.
Pull a prompt now, make an account to keep a profile, or have prompts sent to your phone.