Oddly Inspired is a capstone project that explores how creatives sustain their practice once they leave the structure of school. It overall investigates themes of community, resources, and structure and how they play a role in maintaining creative motivation, wellbeing, and a sense of belonging for emerging creatives working outside educational institutions.
Preface:
This project originated from my own experiences. In 2025 I took a year off school, and to my surprise, came to the realization that I had desired, or rather needed what I chose to leave behind.
Stepping outside the system I became accustomed to made it clear just how much educational structure shaped my ability to create, stay motivated, and feel connected to a larger creative world. I would still have the desire to create, but it felt like I didn't know how to.
With this experience in my back pocket I wanted to research and find a solution to avoid liminality in other creatives, which is when someone is stuck between two sides (in this case, the desire to create and lack of rhythm and resources to do so). For example, when the critiques, peers, shared spaces, and daily creative rhythms suddenly disappear, my goal is to help creatives keep their agency and not lose motivation to keep creating for themselves.
Though developing my research, I have determined that there are three pillars that are involved in sustaining creative motivation, well-being, as well as the overall agency of a designer. These pillars are; Structure, Community, and Resources.
Structure:
This pillar provides a rhythm to work, helping ideas move from intention to action as without it, these ideas stay ideas, but with structure creative momentum becomes easier to sustain
Community:
Community offers reflection and encouragement, it offers a needed sense of belonging that keeps creatives motivated. Being surrounded by others who are like-minded and are also making provides confidence and fuels new ideas.
Resources:
This pillar is especially vital in giving creatives access to tools, spaces, and the support they need to make. When creativity becomes more accessible, creative agency grows and experimentation would be seen as fun and possible.
For each pillar, I hosted three event focusing on the advantages creatives get when provided a platform.
Lock-In Night:
This event is to foster community, to provide creatives a dedicated time and place to get together and work on whatever they want to, whether it is fun "on-the-side" projects or their actual work. They can get together and ask each other for critique.
Creative Reset Night:
This event is to give creatives an abundance of tools and resources to create whatever they want. This is to provide a way for creatives to create without limits.
Project Pitch Night:
This is an event to provide a form of collaborative structure to creatives who are in need of some form of guidance or even a place to gain collaborators to make their project come to life. This is done so that creatives can get realistic validation and support.
Through the events, I created 2 forms of creative outputs to frame and contextualize my findings. The first is a collection of zines that target each pillar and event, and the second is a website that acts as a digital platform to engage with creatives of all kinds.
Both artifacts are made to be under one cohesive brand, "Oddly Inspired." This name came from my year off,
Hi! I am Gabriel Paragas, a young creative who is specializing in
blending motion and brand identities together. I am all about
experimenting and implementing, bridging the gap between design
and dynamic storytelling. Whatever I am creating, whether it’s a
static design piece or a dynamic motion loop or animatic, my goal is
the same: to create and design something that moves people.