Friday Favourites: Research

Friday, 7 November 2014 •

Something that is important in the design world is keeping up with current trends. There are so many ways to do this, from magazines to social media, it's become easy to find out what is going on and what others are doing. These are my favourite websites that I check often to keep me inspired.

Pinterest
I am a self confessed pinterest addict. With two accounts, one used solely for design inspirations, and the other used for every day life, this site is checked more often than I should admit. It can be extremely beneficial to research on, due to being able to keep everything in one place easily. Creating visual bookmarks, this website allows you to easily organise and collate your images in files, and keeps you up to date on what others are liking and doing.

Behance

Behance is the leading online platform to showcase and discover creative work. You can search certain words, and find what others are up to. This is a great platform to upload your portfolio to, as it's free, and it distributes to other online galleries, maximizing the exposure to your work. Many companies explore this website to access talent on a global scale, and therefore it can be extremely beneficial to a designer. Whilst Pinterest is great, you can only pin one image of the site, and it often goes uncredited. Behance has the option to look at full projects and works in progress, therefore it can be inspiring to look through: often, seeing work as a plan or a sketchbook, and see the experiments and thought process that got it to the final look. It also gives you the opportunity to look at the most appreciated work, which is great to see what is in demand and on trend currently.

Dribbble

Similar to Behance, Dribbble showcases a community of designers, from web, graphic, illustrators, icon artists, typographers and logo designers, amongst others, these creatives share their work, process and current projects. With a free account you can follow your favourite designers and teams, like and organize your favourite images, and send limited messaging to designers. What makes this platform different is that, with a pro account -- $20 a year, you can find and hire designers by location and skill and send unlimited messages to designers about work opportunities. This is a great platform to get onto if you are a designer -- though it requires an invitation from a member of the community. Something to aspire to, I guess! You can search through without an account and look at what others are creating, and you can also see "responses" from others full with constructive criticism.

On the bottom of the home page, Dribbble shows the current job opportunities going -- and you don't have to be on the website to apply for the positions.
Cargo Collective





Cargo Collective is also an exclusive website. Unlike Dribbble, you need not an invite, but to apply instead, answering a simple question of, "tell us about yourself and your work." The platform is a personal publishing platform, offering members free-standing websites, with a variety of customizable templates, control in the way content is displayed and an interface built entirely around your work. Though a great way to showcase your portfolio, it isn't this that interests me: the homepage acts as a gallery, collating what is popular, and highlighting some great pieces of work. When I first came across this website, I got lost scrolling for at least an hour. Each link on the gallery takes you to the artists website, where you can see other work. It's quite a great way to find artists and designers whose style inspires you.

The Jealous Curator

"There is one moment, in the first few seconds, when you look at a piece of art and know that you love it. It’s the moment when, if you’re an artist yourself, you look at it and feel a rush of uplifting inspiration… and total soul-crushing jealousy all at the same time. It’s when you walk away thinking, “Damn, I wish I thought of that.”" The Jealous Curator is another site that broadcasts artists and highlights their work. The author herself is a creative director, who decided to create a platform to feature art and design that has "made her jealous." And, after realising that jealousy can actually be turned completely on it's head and used inspiration, she began to use it as fuel to get back into the studio and create something. I've found a lot of incredible artists who have quickly become my favourites due to this site.

Designspiration


Designspiration is one of those sites you just can't help but love. I could scroll for hours through the website and never get bored. You can search colour schemes, or search by typing anywhere at anytime on the site, which is quite quirky. Being able to search through 5 colours of your choice is brilliant when creating a moodboard with a certain colour scheme. Designspiration describe themselves as "focused on maintaining a high level of great design inspiration to share around the world." And being a nudity-free environment, browsing at anytime, anywhere is safe -- so hey, get your designspiration on at work!

This Is Collate


Similar in layout to The Jealous Curator, This Is Collate is a great platform to explore new work by creatives. Featuring anything current, the website is a great platform to look at when needing a boost or a little motivation to kick you into gear. This is one that is raved about often by my lecturers, and I can totally understand why. I've found myself looking through the site when I'm feeling most uninspired: paired with a lot of white space and an underwhelming blog title, the emphasis is solely on the content itself.