Inspiration is the primary element of good design. Designers, however, also risk not being able to find inspiration. Novice designers commonly find themselves to be depressed during the conceptual design phase when they fail to find inspiration and the information to be creative. Accordingly, under the graphic design parameter, we have developed the ‘Analytic Composition Method (ACM)’ to guide novice designers in gradually breaking through their usual modes of thinking to construct their own methods of composition. This method provides a variety of creative modes for the design field. Three stages are presented in this study. A design method is first constructed based on the results of a pretest and the existing composition methods of graphical design. We then apply the design method to three iterations of graphic design instruction. Lastly, we conduct an expert interview to evaluate the usefulness of this method. The following are the results obtained. 1. Most of the participants tested sought inspiration visually; they usually began their design process from image data and do not use the data beyond imagery. 2. The results of teaching activities show that using this method as a tool for graphic design enables various sources of inspiration to generate different modes of thinking and creative expression. 3. Our method could potentially be used for basic composition training and project design execution. However, the application of this method may vary with different design objectives.
