Category: Inspiration
To be honest, stuff other people have made that we wish we had come up with.

Logo rethink: generative identity
If you have ever even remotely been hanging out on with graphic designers, you have come across the logo discussion. Frankly, it is boring, has no answers, and depends on a huge pile of ifs and depends-ons, but the constant fallback is to general guidelines such as clarity, simplicity, it must work on a ballpoint pen and ...

The New Tangram Book
Puzzles have always fascinated me. Language puzzles, escape rooms, logic problems. When I code, I tend to see the coding problem as a puzzle that I need to solve. Especially CSS feels like that lots of the time. Recently, I dove into my parent's bookcase and fished up this old jewel: This 70s book is ...

In memoriam: Quinton Hoover
I can't talk about inspirational art for very long until I brush the subject of Magic: the Gathering. I've been playing this geekery-heavy card game for almost twenty years now. In that period, a humonguous amount of fantasy art has been produced by a myriad of artists. It was this art that drew me to ...

Machinarium: details make perfection…
...and perfection is not a detail. I am a great fan of the work of Amanita design and their games, in particular, Machinarium. Because of this enthusiasm, I have been told that my drawings are heavily influenced by Machinarium and Samorost. But here is the thing; I loved that sort of humour, aesthetics, whimsy and ...

Shel Silverstein – anything can be
“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” I only discovered Shel Silverstein a few years ago... I can only blame it on not having grown up in an ...

J.H. Boot: master of stylisation
I posted about stylisation before, and I'd like to show where I got my inspiration. So without further ado, some of the 'plates' from J.H. Boot's book on how to take some natural object and turn it into something of mathematically precise art. It still amazes me that Boot did not just take the time ...

Twelve-fold symmetry
Little trick in Illustrator. One group of half-transparent objects, mirrored and rotated for a twelve-fold symmetry effect. Change one object, all eleven others follow suit. Goodness ensues ...

Summoning seals & glyphs
As a huge gaming geek, I love video games. As a huge design geek, I love ornaments and decorations. Thus, I love good video games that sport beautiful ornaments. One example that never ceases to inspire me is the Final Fantasy series. Especially the elaborate magical summoning effects border on amazing. An important part of ...

Dangerdust
Came across Dangerdust; anonymous students at Columbus College of Art & Design. Each week they make a new piece of art on a blackboard. Head over to their Bēhance page, and take a look at their stunning work. Here is a quote from Paul Klee and classic from Calvin and Hobbes ...

Stylisation a la 1910
Both my father and his father have been interested in art and decoration. Apparently, things like those are in the blood. Recently, my father passed me along scans of a book by one J.H. Boot he found in his archives, which must have belonged to my grandfather. It's a book about stylisation, the art of ...

Creativity, according to the creative
Creativity, according to the creative - what they say is the essence of creativity..: Any mental occurrence simultaneously associated with two habitually incompatible contexts. Arthur Koestler That moment of insight becomes the creative act as a joining of two previously incompatible ideas. Lyall Watson The association of two, or more, apparently alien elements on a plane ...

W. B. Gould: artist and convict
William Buelow Gould (1801 – 1853) was an English artist convicted for stealing a coat and was sentenced to seven years of labour in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). He constantly got into trouble, also in the penal colonies, and was regularly punished for offences such as drunkenness, petty theft and forgery. His talent, however, got ...

Curiosity
The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is. – Stephen Fry ...

Ernst Haeckel: art and science through the microscope
Ernst Haeckel Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919) was what we call a renaissance man. He was a professor, biologist, philosopher, physician, naturalist and artist. His contribution to biology, evolutionary theory and art is still mind-boggling; we owe a great deal of biological understanding and terminology to him. He was a great promoter of Darwin's theory ...

Creativity
…qualities like quiveriness and vulnerability come to mind when I think of creativity… creativity requires a sense of smell, a palate to taste the scents that make brilliance. All life feeds upon the random. Creativity is the haute cuisine. – Douglas Hofstadter ...

Piet Hein: astro-gymnastics
Go on a starlit night, stand on your head, leave your feet dangling outwards into space, and let the starry firmament you tread be, for the moment, your elected base. Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite, of molten magma, water, iron, and lead; and briefly hold this strangely solid planet balanced upon your ...

Guerrilla communication, street talk
Guerrilla communication is a form of streetart, or simply a sense of humour that uses objects around us and makes us see a little differently. Here are some examples I have collected over the years. You might have to look close to see it... Certain forms of graffiti and scribbling on walls have been described ...

Bow to the masters: learning from Albrecht Dürer
No better way than to learn from the masters. These are freehand drawings after the work of Albrecht Dürer: Dürer had apparently never seen a rhinoceros, so the drawing is what he did after having the animal described ...

da Vinci: flight
Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. – Leonardo da Vinci ...

Piet Hein, danish design and the super-egg
Piet Hein was a modern danish renaissance man. He was born in 1905, died in 1996, studied mathematics, started art studies he never finished, started studies in theoretical physics and never finished that either. He wrote books, poetry ("gruks"); did illustration, designed objects and public spaces, researched mathematics and was a cosmopolitan. He is famous ...

Diego Mazzeo: mechanical animals
Green with envy, I present Diego Mazzeo and his wonderful mechanical animals. I am speechless; they are absolutely stunning and perfect in detail. I am particularly fond of the insert heart on the dragon, with the magnification in the corner. Inspired! Diego Mazzeo mechanical animals mechanical dragon dragon closeup mechanical raven raven closeup Diego Mazzeo, ...

Water
Dangerous, beautiful and essential for life. H2O is a very odd substance; it is gas, liquid and solid in very odd temperature ranges. Think about it; by some mysterious intermolecular forces, two gasses becomes liquid below 100C and solid below 0C. Venus bay, Australia Sweden - Denmark Storebæltsbroen, Denmark Fredrikshavn, Denmark Flinders, Australia dew Sollihøgda, ...

Bow to the masters: learning from Leonardo da Vinci
These are drawn from a book with Leonardo da Vinci's sketches; all in pencil.There is no better way than to learn from the masters. ...

Kingdom: animal
(According to Linnaean taxonomy, there are three kingdoms: vegetable, animal, mineral) After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. – Walt Whitman The ultimate inspiration. Nature, the largest multivariate network there is ...

Douglas Hofstadter: creativity
…qualities like quiveriness and vulnerability come to mind when I think of creativity… creativity requires a sense of smell, a palate to taste the scents that make brilliance. All life feeds upon the random. Creativity is the haute cuisine ...

Streetart
Streetart is all around, in the most unlikely places. I implore you, do not just walk past. Stop and sniff the excellence of creativity in the dark. alley turtle turtle kitty banksy-ish marine life ape in the hotel unicorns weird biker war pac-man eh... trumpeter royal creature stikman piece piece gekko gekko good people once ...