Inspiration
Resources
Your two cents worth: 100 bookmarks, none read?
by Louise Kellerman on 21/04/2012 
Image from http://smalltown-bigtrail.blogspot.co.nz/
In a twitter conversation this week I had with @Kaleb_Francis he used the word ‘discovery’ in talking about the beginning of the design process that undertakes to understand a client’s business and the customer landscape.
This stuck with me and when thinking about it, my mind drifted to images of sailors happening upon newfound lands and in researching it I came across this quote: “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought” [Albert von Szent-Györgyi The Scientist Speculates]
Perhaps these are more romantic definitions but I think if we think about discovery in this broad sense, within it we all have resources that we turn to for both strategic and aesthetic inspiration during this part of our process and I thought it would useful to share some of these resources with each other.
So to make it easily digestible lets start with books:
What are three books you are using or have used within your design process and why? Or do you feel books are redundant and you turn instead to your favorite bookmarks on the web?
When starting a new project I try to avoid going straight to books or websites and just see what happens first. Then, and depending on the job really, I have a few books I like to flick through. I find the Area 1 & 2 books quite good as they are more global and quite diverse in content. Another favourite and well used book is History of Graphic design by Meggs. and Graphic design for the 21st Century by Taschen.
For a faster and more current fix I tend to browse designspiration.net (just start typing to search..) Cargocollective, Behance or ButDoesItFloat for pure visual delights.