Human Limitations
To be more explicit, the human imagination is limited to personal or acquired experience. At no period has any form been created that is not traceable to some process of production, or natural suggestion; for instance, the artistic conception of an angel is merely a combination of human and bird form, and is in no sense an original creation.
The term originality is indeed generally misunderstood, and for the reasons already advanced it is impossible to be original. The real interest in artistic production of any kind is the expression of personality, in other words, the individual point of view of the artist; which is more or less interesting, as it is more or less personal in idea and expression.
In the training of the designer it is essential that the imagination be carefully cultivated and trained to accept suggestion from any possible source.
Design is distinct from any phase of realistic expression inasmuch as the subject does not exist in any concrete form, but has to be mentally visualised.
“Inspiration”
Too much importance is attached to what is believed to be inspiration, but obviously if inspired, design is rather in the nature of an accident than of the deliberate intention it should be and cannot be credited to the individual exponent. What at first sight suggests inspired thought may be accounted for by sub-consciousness, which is really responsible for the evolution of an idea or the solution of some problem.
It would be beneficial to reject once and for all the idea of inspiration with its tendency to encourage the “artistic temperament” in the belief that it “does not feel like it.”
The designer must be ready to respond at any time, and this implies a logical and balanced mind, capable of grasping essentials, and conditions, and of evolving some desirable solution.
Another superstition is that a design is a drawing, and it only requires a facility in this form of expression to produce a design. This is a fallacy, as though many designs are for convenience expressed through this medium, any such drawing must be made with a knowledge of the technical details of the final method of production, to be a practical design.