Naturally Inspired

Last weekend I recently ventured into the country after moving back to the home town, from 8 long years in London. While venturing through the treacherous bogs and lush green landscapes, I forgot how much I missed the countryside. When you live in a city like London you forget how beautiful the British Isles are and you become swamped in an Urban Jungle. So for today's blog post, I wanted to talk about Nature within Creativity.

When Nike designers observed mountain goats at Oregon Zoo, these goats inspired them to develop Goatek Traction and create an all-terrain shoe. Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train is modeled on the Kingfisher's aerodynamic beak and finally, Clarence Birdseye (or Captain Birdseye as we know him) ate some fish that had been naturally frozen and later thawed in Canada while traveling, used natures idea and the frozen -food industry took off!

Everywhere we look nature is pointing us in the direction of inspiration and creativity, which brings me nicely onto the artists of the hour and all of these Illo Artists embody the beauty of nature and the quintessential attributes of the environment around them. In the pictures below we have Katie Walker from the UK Brighton who created the illustration called Socially distended waving in the sunny sun. The second artist below is Laila Ekboir who created the illustration a Murmuration of Starlings and last but not least is Uma Joana who created the illustration of Summer times on the beach.

So next time your creating, use what’s around you to inspire you, whether that be that annoying seagull squawking outside of your window or the mouldy banana you have for lunch, think of nature not as a source of material to use, but as a library of ideas.

“There is no better designer than nature”

Alexander McQueen

This piece was written by Thomas Allen @ Illo Agency
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