Write or design in-house? Here’s how to keep it fresh.

When your job requires you to come up with yet another carmel macchiato counter card, your tenth consecutive Medicare seminar postcard of the week, or one more “big fall sale” banner ad, it’s easy to get a little burnt out. Such is the life of the in-house designer or copywriter.

The upsides of the job—employment security, great benefits, and an opportunity to truly understand your “client’s” business—make dealing with the inevitable brainblocks a problem well worth it.

At a recent workshop at the School of Visual Concepts, Jerry Kopec, creative director for Seattle’s Group Health Cooperative, shared some of the tips his group practices to keep it fresh.

Tops on the list, according to Kopec, is to take responsibility. It’s all too easy for in-house creatives to blame the client, a lack of time, a paltry budget, or sheer boredom for doing something less-than-great. It’s up to you, Kopec says. You have to take responsibility for the work, and for educating your clients and colleagues if they aren’t seeing the wisdom of doing well-designed, conceptual solutions.

Once you’ve made the commitment to keep the creative standards high, what do you do to unearth fresh ideas? Kopec suggests you get out and kick the tires. By visiting stores (your own and your competitors), touring the factory, talking to customers and the people out on the front lines, you’ll likely see things in a new light, and possibly pick up a tidbit you can use as the inspiration for a creative idea.

Kopec also advises creatives to get smart about your industry and competition. Read competitors’ web sites, check out industry marketing blogs (or start one if they don’t exist), and spend some time with creative industry publications, awards books, and web sites. The point isn’t to plagiarize, of course. It’s to energize your brain and see how others have done some thinking outside the box.

The last suggestion Kopec makes, along with learning some simple brainstorming tactics, is to make sure you spend some time adding raw material to your temporal lobes. All creative ideas, he points out, are simply the recombination of two or more known ideas. Thus, the more you have packed between your ears, the more material you have to draw from when it’s time to come up with a new marketing idea. Whether it’s hitting a rodeo, listening to an opera, or checking out a swap meet, Kopec says you can never go wrong by trying new things outside your comfort zone and building a “well-furnished mind.”

These ideas alone are no cure-all for in-house creative fatigue, but they’re guaranteed to beat doing nothing and staying stuck.