We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zipeng Zhu a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Zipeng, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
As a creative myself, to keep my creativity alive is not only is important for my mental healthy but it’s also crucial for keeping me alive literally since it’s my only source of income.
I personally do these following few things to help keeping my creativity alive.
1. Know when to take breaks – creativity is not 24/7 television marathon, it’s not meant to be on all the time, knowing when to pause and take a break can keep you from burnt out
2. Live life – I think anything could be a source of inspiration, therefore I try to do many different activities to add into my source pool and it really doesn’t need to be link to your field of interest, honestly you never know what will create the sparks
3. Daily practice, it’s kinda like working out, if there’s a routine of any kind, will help you to create better. I try to make at lease one thing a day to keep my creative muscle pumping
I hope these are helpful, but at the end of the day, creativity is something we all have, don’t over think it, just start making.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Zipeng Zhu is a Chinese-born artist, designer, art director, illustrator, and animator in New York City who wants to make every day a razzle-dazzle musical. His clients include Apple, Adidas, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix, New York Times, The New Yorker, CNN, MTV, and Samsung. He was one of the Art Directors Club Young Guns 13 winners and has been recognized as Print magazine’s New Visual Artist and The One Show Young Ones. His work has been exhibited all over the world including New York, Barcelona, Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai, Beijing and other major museums and institutions. Now he runs his creative practice Dazzle Studio and gift shop Dazzle Supply to push dazzle to the next level.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Colorful, Relentless & Exuberant
Just do you~
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
How to take my work to the next level.
Contact Info:
- Website: dazzle.studio
- Instagram: @zzdesign
- Twitter: @zzdesign
