OUGD402: Current & Potential Influences

"BE A SPONGE"

We had a talk from Penny Lee about how we should be more open and receiving when it comes to everyday inspirations regardless of what form it's in. Not everyone, me included, necessarily has a habit of reading blogs, books, magazines etc. on a regular basis or even going to see performances and visiting galleries every now and then.

She put emphasis on how getting into a routine of checking blogs daily, reading books and visiting art related events can give you inspiration, even when you least expect it to. This is in turn will help a lot when it comes to coming up with ideas for briefs, tasks etc.

Some of Penny's suggested ones that she quite often reads/watches include Ted Talks, Do Lectures, The Chicken Shed Chronicles, Dazed & Confused and Medium. 

After being in groups and writing down between us our current inspirations, we then regrouped as a class and discussed, with reasoning, why we read and watch, what we do on a regular basis.

From this talk we had to find 10 sources of inspirations from other groups and find out a little more about them as they could potentially become some of our own influences.

1. My Modern Met

- Website containing blogs about art, design, photography, architecture and everyday ongoings.

- Has it's own online shop selling prints & photographs.

2. Design Milk

- Design Milk is a design blog featuring interior design ideas, architecture, modern furniture, home decor, art, style, and technology founded by Jaime Derringer.

- They also have another website named Dog Milk, the idea behind the website is the same as their main site except it's based entirely around dogs, blogging about designer dog sweaters and dog beds.

 

3. Colossal Blog

- Colossal is a Webby-Nominated blog that explores art and other aspects of visual culture. It is also one of the top 50 blogs on the internet.

- They have an online shop selling a mixture of art pieces and various goods such as Ferrofluid Displays, playing cards and cups.

4. Goodtype

- Goodtype is a website dedicated to sharing pieces of lettering and typography. There is now a community of over 250,000 people worldwide, that follow the website and their blogs.

 

5. One Minute Briefs

- One minute briefs is a Twitter page & blog that is dedicated to hosting design briefs everyday. The idea behind it is that they post a brief and people come up with ideas within a relatively short period of time to see how different people interpret these briefs.

6. Sight Unseen

- Sight Unseen is an online magazine that explores the world of design and visual arts.

- They also curate exhibitions and pop-up shops, produces events, and provides editorial and marketing services

 

7. Friends of Type

- Friends of Type features original typographic design and lettering pieces, with new posts everyday. 

- They claim that their "Posts are meant to log ideas, express ourselves, and inspire each other and our readers".

 

8. People of Print

- Established in May 2013, they have a team of art directors, project managers, graphic designers, illustrators, developers and printmakers that post regularly about all things print related.

 

9. Booooooom

- Booooooom was set up in 2008 by Vancouver-based artist Jess Hamada. It is now one of Canada's highest traffic art blogs and also one of the biggest on the internet. They post pieces of contemporary artwork from many different artists including up and coming young artists. 

 

10. Medium

- Medium describe themselves as 'a different kind of place to read and write on the internet'. This is down to the fact that they think more about the quality of the ideas that matter, not how many page views they get. Their website has high quality blog posts about various topics, some art related others just general everyday topics, either way for the most part they're interesting to read.