Perceiving inspirational material is an important part of conceptual design. Cognitive processes like ‘analogical reasoning’ and ‘semantic processing’ in the perception of inspirational material are widely studied. However, the distinct role played by aspects of emotion such as perception of affective quality in the perception of inspirational material is relatively unexplored. Through a descriptive phenomenological approach, this paper details the subjective experiences of seven design students perceiving inspirational material for a graphic design task. The students’ perception of inspirational material ranged from ‘surface’ to ‘deep’ modes. Through perception of affective quality, a distinct deep perceptual mode, students subjectively valued and related to inspirational materials and assessed their potential to evoke changes in feelings. Inspirational material shown in virtual reality (VR) induced immersive ‘first-person experiences’, heightening other modes like perception of affective quality. These findings detail the inspiration process in graphic design and advance wider research on design inspiration and cognition. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.