Bookmarks for November 4th through November 5th

These are my Jumptags for November 4th through November 5th:

• 20 Merry Icon Sets For Christmas – Icon sets for Christmas and holidays.
• Elements of Design: Type – Type is a fundamental part of any design it appears in. It can be used as text to read, as a shape and as a visual element where the choice of typeface conveys an emotion or mood. Type, when used well doesn’t need a photograph or illustration to back…
• Showcase of Big, Bold Typography – Big, bold typography can be very powerful for conveying a message or just for achieving a desired look. In this post we'll showcase more than 25 items that feature big, bold typography. To see more work from a particular artist/designer, click on the…
• 4 Principles of Good Design for Websites – One of the areas of focus that I’ve taken into all my designs are the four major design principles. They include: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.
• 6 Ways To Take Your Webdesign From Good To Great – In a previous article I went into detail about the important roles that contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity play in webdesign. This article will piggy back on those principles as I examine 6 ways you can take your webdesign from good to gre…

Where does your inspiration for design come from?

Some examples of items I've collected in my inspiration folder

Sometimes I have a clear picture of how I want to approach a new project.  Other times, it’s open-ended, leaving me without a clear themed direction for the graphic design or instructional design. For a long time, I have kept a simple, nondescript manila folder in the bottom right drawer of my desk.  In it, I collect Sunday circulars, postcards, direct mail flyers, etc., for when it comes time to create a new layout, color scheme, theme or graphic design.  This is akin to interior designers or HGTV-wannabes collating a stack of tear-sheets from magazines.  This is a technique that I learned way back in undergrad when I was print-publishing-and-packaging major.

Even farther back in high school when I was on the yearbook and newspaper staff, we collected headlines from magazines and newspapers that we could reuse.  We used scissors and glue and pasted the headlines into manilla folders.  So whenever we were hard-up for a headline—that is, one that didn’t sound like we were desperate for a headline—we went through the folders.  It was and still is a great technique.

Not long ago, I had a teacher recommend to me that she gets her students to collect really good adjectives and puts these either on notecards on a key ring or in a spreadsheet.  Whenever the kids need to write descriptive paragraphs or just use better adjectives, she gets them to pull them out.

More recently, I’ve begun to collect cartoons and images that I would like to reuse in my instruction.  I use Jumptags to collect my bookmarks, and it also allows you to save images (plus, video and HTML code, too).  So, particularly, now when I’m looking for an image to communicate an idea on a slide or in instruction, I’ll save it into my bookmarks, too.  Just in case I’d like to reuse it or use it as a source of inspriration.

In addition, a few of the blogs that I subscribe to regularly post unique sources of inspiration for designs, such as skateboard designs, photography and typography.  Here’s a list of a few that I am inspired by:

• Smashing Magazine
• instantShift
• Think Design

But here’s a few instructional design, development and elearning blogs that I also use for inspiration:

• Instructional Design and Development Blog
• Rapid eLearning Blog
• eLearning Roadtrip

Where do your inspirations for graphic design, message design and instructional design come from?  Leave some comments and share, please.