As a creative, there’s a fine balance between drawing from your own head and individual, unique ideas, and opening your eyes wide to the world around you, drawing inspiration from outside of you. Seeing what others have to offer keeps you humble and open-minded, and gives you the opportunity to discover unexpected solutions.
With that in mind, I present a list of valuable links for designers and general creative thinkers:
Number one on my list. I’ve expressed that one needs to examine the works of others, but this does not only apply to one’s field.
Fast Company provides news not only about innovative work but innovative thinking. The layout of the sections alone is inspiring.
TED selects experts and outstanding individuals to deliver talks about what they feel should be shared with the world: a great source of new perspectives.
Focusing on more visually oriented resources, Designspiration provides users with a wealth of designs, illustrations, andgeneral items of visual interest.
Linking to each item will provide links to an assortment of related pieces, and there’s a search function if you want to get more specific. A quick looks through is a great way to start off a day designing.
A very design focused blog, The Fox is Black is also asource for other arts, visual and audio, and applicable cultural tidbits.
They provide some beautiful desktop wallpapers, and run some cool contests, like the Re-covered books project.
Devoted to packaging design, samples of works can inspire rich color palettes, beautiful typography and successful interface design.
Do you have any links to share? Post them in the comments, and let us know what you think!
