Ahh, summertime! A perfect time to recharge and look for new routes for inspiration. If you ever do find yourself sitting at home, hopelessly hunting for some sort of design motivation, fear not, openbox9 is here to help! We now present 7 aesthetically inspirational websites. (Careful though, these might be enough to motivate you to get out of your chair and do things. Cool things.)
1. Pinterest.com
Open Pinterest up and feast your eyes upon hundreds of beautiful pictures. From outfits to typography to food to crafts, Pinterest has an unimaginable amount of opportunity for inspiration. In order to “re-pin” or add “pins”, you must be a member (sign up and wait in a line, or ask a friend for an invitation), however you can scroll through and see all the images without needing login info. A benefit of membership is the ability to re-pin images you like onto “boards” that you make for yourself. The more pins you collect, the larger your creative board gets.
2. Tumblr.com
Tumblr is a blogging platform with an artistic twist. Sign up and then start following all the art, design, photography, quote, architecture, food, and movie blogs that you can; all of these will start showing up on your “dashboard”. The more you follow, the more results will constantly be streaming onto the dashboard, and the more satisfied you’ll be. Best of all, Tumblr is a blog at heart, and will be there you when you want to write about your summer adventures.
3. AIGA.org
AIGA stands for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, is the national graphic design organization that is critical for design networking and credibility. The home page of the site has recently been redesigned to feature design articles, trends, and even bios of current designers. It’s colorful, fun to look at, and feels very official – if it made it to the AIGA homepage, it must be good! Just a quick read through of any of the articles is enough to encourage creativity.
4. NOTCOT.org
We might be graphic designers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pull inspiration from anywhere! Thanks to a good friend, who is also an industrial designer and photographer, I discovered NOTCOT. It focuses mostly on innovative product design, but delves into packaging design, graphics, photography, as well as all-over silliness: one of the first images on the page was Big Foot standing atop Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. What’s not to love?
5. Typographyserved.com
A big thanks again to Matt who introduced me to Typographyserved. Much like the before-mentioned sites, Typographyserved goes a step further and focuses solely on typography. A beautiful thing about Typographyserved is that it’s part of a network of “served” sites. A drop down menu at the top of the screen reveals “industrial design served”, “photography served” among others. Once you dry those tears of joy, you’ll have a whole new world to explore.
6. Fab.com
A new site, Fab.com is a creative hub with an emphasis on purchasing the work displayed. You won’t be viewing “101 things to do with a soup can”, but you’ll see designers hard work and dedication on display to buy. Scrolling through the site is easy and pretty to look at; each picture is high quality. You don’t have to buy anything to admire the designers’ craft, after a while though, you might want to!
7. Hypebeast.org
Our final site of summer inspiration is Hypebeast. Get up to date on all the latest in shoe design, clothing design, art, music, culture, and events. Just by reading the description is exhausting. All the content is extremely up to date and very international; after taking a quick spin through the ARTS section, I now want to visit the Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong, ASAP.
We just supplied you with enough content to keep you inspired, motivated, and creative for days – you’re welcome! However, there is no shortage of sites out there to fawn over. Have fun and don’t forget, you can find creativity anywhere!
