The lazy man's design inspirations.

Hey blogosphere,
Every once in a while, there's dry spells when it comes to work. Freelancing and office work.
It seems that one day you'll be sitting at home on the couch thinking :"God I wish I had some projects to do" and then 10 of them land in your email. Most of the time these jobs land in my lap when I really need them. Like after buying a new car, or trying to save money for a new fence for the house. At work it's the same. The days are longer when you're not busy, but when you are busy the days are literally longer because you're staying late at work or comin' in early but go by much quicker. It's an amazing feeling to just get stuff done and when you've got down time you need to obviously keep yourself busy, motivated and inspired.

On my down time, I tend to look up design sites that post new and old design images , to keep my mind open to new ideas out there and to keep up with on-going trends. Like how lens flairs keep popping in and out of style. haha

These are two great examples of inspirational design sites.
http://designyoutrust.com

http://ffffound.com

FFFFOUND is a site you can completely lose yourself in. Once you click on one item, it delivers a number of related design ideas all ranging from architecture to photography to graphic design to just helarious animated gifs .

I also like to keep on top of current events. 1- so that I know what's happening in the world and communities around me or 2- so that my retired parents and I can have some interesting things to talk about when I visit.

But the one thing that never changes is music. I once worked at a job where the VPs and Managers wanted the designers to not have our earphones in at work. I can understand taking one ear bud out so that you can hear what going on around you, and to hear if there's someone running up to you ready to hit you with a bag of pennies but managers thought we shouldn't have any type of earphones because it made the office look juvenile and unprofessional. What the non-creative population miss sometimes is that music is another art form that aids the development of ideas. If a director didn't have any music in any of their films, how interesting would it be? Music moves people. It creates their sense of environment and puts people in their "Happy Place". Even Cannibal Corpse puts some people I know in their "Happy Places". I explained my thoughts to this certain manager who wanted that rule implemented and it was a huge eye opener. He said he never thought about it in that light. The one ear in one ear out was then put into fruition.
I myself am a big fan of punk rock, rock, or anything that gets the adrenaline going, but when it comes to designing with music akimbo, I go with anything that keeps the mind at ease. I have found in the past that high octane music gets my blood flowing and I want to finish things faster which then results into mistakes. I find ambient music to help design flow easier.
Music like Cinematic Orchestra. Some of their work just puts you in a spot that you don't want to get out of. I find myself hitting repeat a lot at my desk with their music.
One song by another group called Orbital puts me in my happy place. The song is called "Halcyon and On and On". Some might recognize it from the movie Hackers. This song get the creative juices going big time. Apart from some songs I have on my ipod from a while ago. This song is the top song played on it. It brings the heart rate down, and centers your mind properly.
It's like Enya, just without making you cry or feel like your flying over green hills in Ireland.
The last type of music I love listening to are soundtracks from movies that I love. I'm a big movie buff, having around 300 DVDs at home. I think soundtracks are really underrated by people. And I'm not talking about soundtracks that have your little one-offs like my friend's band Cauterize who were featured on Eurotrip's soundtrack. I'm talking about the background music by great composers. One great example is the soundtrack to Last Samurai by Hans Zimmer. Beautifully put together and really gives you a sense of time and space.
So these are examples of stuff that allows me to keep my mind in Design mode.
Now, when I'm on my way to hockey, that's a different story.

Anyways, this are a few things on how I stay inspired while designing.
Boy ! that went on for a while. If you read through it all fantastic, I just hope I didn't bore you too much.
Either way, it's raining and looks like it's going to be a miserable weekend but I love the rainy weekends personally. Gives me yet another reason not to finish my fence or to cut the grass. Then again it's fall now and the grass isn't growing anymore.

Pauly