Capturing Design Inspiration
We're all inspired by the work we see, and sometimes that inspiration shows through a little, and sometimes too much. A technique we've been using for a while at Bright Corner is to screen capture just a small visual cue that we appreciate and save it to a folder. You'll have inspiration without the influence.
The obvious benefit here is that you can keep a repository of inspiration that lets you focus on the subtle details rather than the entire composition of a particular design. Even if the inspiration doesn’t ever show up in your design, the attention to detail will help you improve your design skills in general.
It works out pretty well really. When you come across a design you appreciate, instead of bookmarking the site, look at the details and save a small portion of a screenshot for later. When it does influence your next design, it will only influence a small part, and you won’t “accidentally” gain too much inspiration from one particular site.
As a disclaimer, I’m not advocating outright copying of different details from different sites and merging them all together. These should still be used as inspiration only.
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Couldn't agree more. If you find yourself designing a page with the inspirational site open within view, more likely than not there's going to be too many similarities when you're done. I've run into this problem before and it drives me nuts. I've had to force myself to stop looking. I like your approach and might give a try. The devil IS in the details... mwa hahahahaha.....ha... *shifty eyes*
get your kicks on http://screenspire.com and grab all that stuff!
This is the best idea I've heard in a long time. It's easy and frustrating to find yourself taking *too much* inspiration from other work - especially if you're not having a particularly creative day. Looking at little chunks of design like this takes the focus off the design and puts it on the elements that inspire you. I'm trying it right now... so far it's really helping.
This is a really good idea. Like many web designers I keep an inspiration folder, and this is a great way to zero in on what makes each one work so well! Cheers!
I have been trying to do this for a while now as I am always seeing something cool and then forgetting where I saw it a few months later.
I have not found a perfect way of doing it yet but I have recently been using the firefox scrapbook extension which grabs the whole page, if I could find something that could grab a section of a page and add a comment to it would be better.
I love this idea! I have trouble getting caught up in a site's design and you get tunnel vision where you can't anything else but that. It's usually the small, subtle details that catch my eye anyways so this is perfect.
Get a paid backpack account and use http://www.techsmith.com/products/snagit/firefox.asp to email grabs to it. Works great. You'll need SnagIt as well.
I think it would be cool to see a site that literally takes different elements and throws them all together. It would be like, a disjointed tribute to good design, a sort of scrapbook / mosaic of sorts. Anyway, not saying it should be done, just that it would be cool.
Great idea! I've started a Flickr pool to do this whilst someone comes up with an easier or more useful way of doing this:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/design-inspiration
If you have any snippets of inspiration that you'd like to share with others, post them up (if you can work out how to use Flickr groups).
Rob.
Great idea.
Love the idea. To much attention to reference make my design uncontrolled.
Food for thought. Nyam! I'll try this for my redesign.
Brilliant! This saves me from the evils of my "Inspirata" bookmarks folder.
Do you also keep source information with the snippet? On one hand I like the idea of completely (kind of) anonymous inspiration but on the other hand just like with any other quote sometimes you have to go back to the source and eliminating the trail seems like a bad idea.
Sunshine - I actually find that keeing the trail is a bad idea. The problem is that if you see the complete context, it can unconcsiously influence you too much. This way, you rarely have to worry about that.
So the answer is no because I'd personally rather not even have the trail. However, if it's important, I suppose you could save the images and name them by the URL of the site where you found them.
great idea - i'm going to start doing that right now! it'll also help me remember why exactly i bookmarked a site as "inspiration" when i go to look at it a few months later.
an good inspiration to, is whatch tv and cinema. like scince-fiction movies, capture it, and take a look at it, and you will have an inspiration, too ;)
Fantastic idea..... no I will be able to get rid of my overflooded favorites' folder........
Check this firefox extention out guys. Might be what you are looking for. Good idea! screengrab