Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the many galleries that are littered across the internet, collecting examples of various well designed (or at least pretty) websites, packaging, print material and virtually everything else that could or would ever be touched by a designer. Often, we talk about these sites as sources of “inspiration” for our own work and designs.

In a similar fashion, there are hundreds of sites publishing hundreds of lists of similar material – usually taken from the same sites we’ve already mentioned – which are also created to be a source on inspiration.

These days, it seems as though inspiration is always just a few clicks away (or taps for iPhone/Pod/Pad users). In fact, I would even go so far as to suggest that this kind of inspiration itself has become a commodity, freely peddled across this vast internet.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

If this is the extent of our understanding of what inspiration is, it seems to me that it will lead to an (unintentional) mechanization of the creative process. It suggests that inspiration is something that can be found on the internet as easily celebrity gossip, teeth whitening kits and other content of a more questionable nature. It is telling us that inspiration can be consumed, just like everything else.

This is simple not the case.

True Inspiration

Inspiration is not a product to be picked off the shelf. It is much more vital, much more organic and far less predictable. We don’t find inspiration – inspiration strikes at us. It presents itself to us boldly, lights a fire under our imaginations or dreams or visions. It comes on us, often unexpectedly, and when is comes it demands a response.

To put it another way: true inspiration moves us to do something that we never intended to do, or at least to do something in a way that we had never intended to do it. Often, in the midst of life, as I look around at particular situation, I may be inspired to create or write a story. Thoughts and ideas begin to peculate in my mind – usually related to whatever circumstance I am faced with. Characters spring to life for me. A plot begins to unfold in my mind. Soon, I find myself excited by the emerging adventures.

From my perspective, this is true inspiration. Taken quite literally, it breaths life into me.

When was the last time you had this kind of experience while surfing through an online gallery, or reading an “inspiration” blog post, or even flipping through one of the many showcase books that feature some of the best work from some area of design? When it occurs, I would guess that it is a rarity, and that if you made your living moving from one such moment to the next, it wouldn’t be much of a living at all.

Design is a different kind of beast altogether. It is purposeful and intentional, the process of building a solution to meet an expressed need. This differs dramatically from the sudden an unintentional nature of true inspiration, though the two need not be exclusive. Often inspiration can be the need that design works to fulfill.

One of My Own Inspirations

For example, at one of the more recent points in my life, I was inspired toward an experiment in which I would publish parts of an interesting new fantasy story to a custom built website on a continuing basis, keeping the plot open and allowing it to evolve according to reader response. The idea for the story came from a dream and the idea of how to present it just came upon me one day as I was thinking of how best to deliver the story.

Since, prior to idea coming to me, I never had any intention of creating such a website, it certainly qualifies as inspiration for me.

A Story Inspired By a Dream

Yet, despite my inspiration, the imagined product does not simply spring into existence, full grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Oh the story and many of the characters are there, but the actual product itself does not exist at all yet, mostly because I have not found the time to devote to building the site in question, or to commit to the continued writing of the story. Even if I did, though, design would still be necessary. I would have to analyze the elements of my inspiration and then set about building the proper framework to bring it to fruition.

In this sense then, design is actually the intentional execution of spontaneous inspiration. It does not seek out “inspiration” from various blogs and galleries in order to establish a working foundation. More often than not, though, the designs that we are working on don’t even have that initial moment of true inspiration. Many are client projects, for which we as designers are charged with creating an appropriate solution, regardless of whether inspiration chooses to appear.

What We’re Really Looking For

So what am I saying? Am I suggesting that you should abandon looking at galleries at the outset of a project? Not at all. I think it can actually be a very valuable practice – just not one that can really be called inspiration.

At the most extensive, I would call it source or reference material, since the purpose of browsing these galleries should only every to research different ideas and concepts. Examine the solutions that other designers have used solve various design problems. Take notes, compare these solutions against the requirements of your own project, using your findings to help devise the best possible design solution.

I am also not suggesting that inspiration can never occur in design. It most certainly can, and some of the best work probably springs from true and legitimate inspiration. What I am suggesting is that we cannot wait for this true inspiration to strike. Nor can we force its hand.

Instead, we should focus on honing our craft, learning the fundamentals of design so that we can learn to produce beautiful, effective and well crafted solutions, without having to rely on a sudden burst of inspiration to drive and/or motivate us.

What are your thoughts? If you seek “inspiration” when starting out on a new design project, are you actually looking for ideas, concepts and solutions? Have you ever had a real moment of genuine inspiration while tackling a client design? I expect that this post may be a bit of a pot stirrer, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Those of you who may have read my 25 Dark Websites and 25 Creative Footers posts may be noticing a pattern developing here. I’ve decided to do my best to stick with the whole 25 theme for these roundup articles. It’s just a nice, round manageable number, but still enough to prove valuable. I have a wide range of different ideas for these roundups, too, so be on the look out for more coming your way.

I’ve also been doing some thinking about roundups in general. I’ve seen several different posts just this past week that are complaining about how the authors’ RSS readers are getting crammed with all kinds of roundup posts – so much so that it’s getting difficult to find other, valuable content.

I guess I hadn’t really thought of that before. Most of the stuff in my reader is actually tutorial and/or freebie oriented. I see most of the roundups I visit via Twitter. Still, I certainly don’t want to be viewed as clutter, so I’m going to do my best to add extra value to these roundups with a bit of extra editorializing!

Anyhow, today I want to look at a trend that I’ve been noticing in my frequent visits to various CSS galleries. It seems that on almost every page of these galleries I see sites that are designed around green and grassy imagery. Obviously, such sites don’t actually appear on every page, but there certainly are a lot of them! They tend fall into one of two categories. Either they use a ground level view of grass as a sort of horizontal divider or feature lush rolling hills – usually vectorized and cartoony.

Here are 25 different examples of this trend.

Anna Pawelczyk

Blogsville 2009

RIPIE

TwittGround

New House Farm

Ten24Media

Acroex

BimbiSicuramente

Blossom Village Resort

CampamentoUniversiatrio

Clark Studios

Dean Oakley

Foot Steps

GeoVision

Guga

HearthCore

Jaider Morais

Juan Diego Velasco

KiddiKicks

Mint

Parcheggio

Riegos Ariel

Slim Kiwi

SPAFU Online Marketing

Yodaa

These sites come in varying degrees of effectiveness, and I am in no way trying to suggest that these are great or sensational designs (though I did weed out some of the weaker designs – pun intended). I am also not saying that they any of them are poor. This is simply a showcase. However, this collection certainly demonstrates that there is a very strong trend towards using these this kind of imagery in web design. And there are many different types of sites represented, suggesting that it is not just one particular group or industry that’s latching on to this trend.

You make also notice that these elements all tend to work pretty much the same way. The grass stretches horizontally across the screen, creating a clear and logical divider. Most of the sites listed here actually take advantage of this, using the natural break as a means of organizing their content in some form or other. It’s an interesting technique that many of these sites actually implement quite well.

Now, before you get too inspired and run off to throw a grassy divider into your next website design, let’s take a moment to think about some of the advantages and disadvantages of using this kind of imagery.

Advantages

• Position yourself as Green – The entire concept of the environment and climate change is a huge deal these days. Many people are thinking and talking about it, and this use of nice, green grass very naturally posits your site as being “green”.
• Natural Divider – We’ve already touched on the fact that that this design technique provides you with a very obvious horizontal break, which you can use to organize your content
• Open and Friendly – Grass can suggest friendliness and openness – a sort of neighborly camaraderie – and could be a useful visual element if this is the kind of image you want associated with your site or brand.

Disadvantages

• Position yourself as Green – Wait, didn’t we just mention this as an advantage? We did indeed, and while it can be beneficial, it can also work against you. Many environmentally conscious people are also very aware of what companies are doing, or not doing, and can have very strong backlash against those who try to make themselves look “green” without taking any actual steps or initiatives to helping the environment or slowing climate change. Beware of the backlash that can come from this kind of “greenwashing”, even if it’s unintentional.
• A Tired Concept? – This post alone collects 25 grassy sites, and I had several most listed when I was doing my research. I’m sure there are more than that, too. So, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this kind of imagery is pretty common out there on the web these days. As such, unless it is a perfect fit for your site, you may want to think twice about following this particular trend.
• Wrong Visual Cue? – Another possible disadvantage with this trend could be the strong associations that grass can convey. Will visitors immediately assume that the site has something to do with grass itself – perhaps a seed or fertilizer company? As designers, we always (or at least almost always) want viewers to look at something and get it right away, not have to puzzle it out on their own. If using grass (or any other design element) will obscure meaning rather than reveal it, then it’s probably not the right choice

Obviously, this is just a really cursory look at the trend of using green and grassy designs on the web, but I hope that it has been at least somewhat insightful and/or inspiring for you.

I’d love to hear you opinions! Have you ever used grass as a design element? Are there any other sites that you would like to add to this list? Are there any other advantages or disadvantages that strike you? We’d love to hear them, so feel free to drop a comment!

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Alright everybody, time for some inspiration. Today, I have collected over 30 different logo designs that are clearly inspired by the concept of CMYK colour. Most of these logos just use a combination of these colours, but some actually make more use of a fuller colour spectrum in which Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are all prominently visible (though one logo uses red instead of magenta).

Obviously, these logos are also mostly associated with and/or from companies (or imagined companies) somehow related with the print and design industries, whether that be through inks, actual printing or just colour and design in general.

You will also notice that there are four logos for a company called “CMYK Print Services”. There are actually a TON of different logos with this same name out there, so I don’t know if there was a contest or some spec work going on… regardless I only chose four of what I felt were the strongest of that crop.

Anyhow, let’s take a look. Here are the logos, in no particular order (except I saved on of my very favorites for last).

Colorfull

Inkake

Anuyog Design Process Print

Inksect

Inksie

Toucink

CMYK Today

Express Press

inKing

Colour Synergy

CMYK Garden

Inkline

Soluções Gráficas

Inkspector

Castle Print

Inkcut

Inkstruction

Royalnova

cmykserwis.pl

Seraprints

Digital Printing & Media Solutions

CMYK Print Services

CMYK Print Services

CMYK Print Services

CMYK Print Service

Speedy Print

ANS Printing

Copy Print

Cosmoprinters

imitacion

Cardinal Prints

As you can probably tell if you follow any of these links, I found most of these at LogoPond.com and a few at LogoSauce.com.

Now it’s your turn to talk! Which ones were your favorites? Or do you just cringe at the use of CMYK in logos? Do you think that this colour concept has any validity anymore, even in the colour-saturated print and ink industries? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one!

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