I think with the recent publicity of Instagram’s new policy on who owns the copyright of the images you upload has started making many people wonder.. “should I use Instagram or not”?, particularly if you are uploading all your professional creative works to the social media platform, but I believe that Instagram does have its place in any designer’s app arsenal. It can actually be a really useful and beneficial tool to all creatives and here is why I think so.
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Raising Awareness
The benefit to any budding photographer, artist or graphic designer is obvious. It can show to others what you are capable of and also how you see the world. Creatives see the world in a slightly different way than a “normal” person, a lot of things have metaphors, they see composition in things that others wouldn’t batter an eyelid at and Instagram allows others to see into the world of our creative minds..i think that is a very powerful tool for all creatives, it definitely inspires us to create.
For fun
For me, being creative is a hell of a lot of fun and is on par with video games and high adrenaline sports. Just taking random photos of things you experience and things you see can be great to share with the world.
Inspiration catalogue
As a professional designer I am constantly thinking of how things can be designed, improved or made exciting and sometimes when you walk past somewhere something sparks inside you. Instagram can be a place to store all the things that inspire you and hash tagging each image will also make it easier to find. You may argue Facebook offers the same option but I believe using Instagram for this purpose is a much better app than Facebook for storing inspiration & ideas from general life.
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Don’t be daft
Don’t put images on Instagram that you have spent weeks creating, I don’t believe Instagram was made for that. Unless you are happy for others to lift your hard work and use it as their own or alternatively if you have already received payment for your creation then that is fine, it could even help you build a larger fan base.
Improving design composition
If you set your camera to have grid lines what you can do is really play with composition ( I will discuss this in the near future when I discuss the basics of photography ), this is useful for photography but can also be applied to other areas such as graphic design, web site design & painting. You will notice you really pay attention to how you layout your composition whenever you work and how important it is in creating excellent design.
Increase creativity
It also has the knock on effect of becoming more creative as you are constantly thinking how you might be able to catch the perfect image and seeing everything as a work of art rather than just passing your time through space and time. I highly recommend using it as much as possible to increase your imaginations power.
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Benefits outway the negatives
If you are concerned about copyright and who is using your images then don’t use instagram, if on the other hand you are happy for others to see life through your eyes and you want to improve your creative skills then instagram is probably one of the best apps out there right now. The world is a beautiful place, we should record it, share it and spread the positive things we experience, lets change our perceptions of reality together