Week 3 - Let the Creative Juices Flow

This week I've been looking at various different websites, imagery and fonts for the latest design trends and inspiration.

I came across smashingmagazine.com which provides lots of hints and tips to help freelance web/graphic designers. They mentioned in one post that looking at desktop screen savers can be a great source of inspiration. I probably would never have thought to look at screen savers to help generate some design ideas for my Major Project website. I had a flick through the catalogue of what they consider to be the top 45 wallpapers.

Wallpaper designed by Minhaj Mohamed, sourced via smashingmagazine.com

The things that stood out in this wallpaper were the colours and simplicity of the design. I'm very indecisive when it comes to design and look around for ideas before executing my own, but the one thing I am sure of is that I love clear, crisp and simple design. For me, this type of design is more effective than any other. The layout and colour of a design (web, print and fonts) are the first 2 things that catch my eye. I like both extremes...bright and bold or calm and neutral.

Wallpaper designed by Wirdy Hamidy, sourced via smashingmagazine.com

I love 1950's pop art inspired design. I love creating strong images from simple photos by posterizing them or using Photoshop to create a pop art effect. This image illustrates what I meant by a bright and bold type of design. I also think it's really contemporary.

Creative Experimentation:

I used photoshop to edit this image of my nephew. This style of pop art is commonly used and was influenced by Andy Warhol, the other uses a comic book effect which was inspired by Roy Linchtenstein. These are my favourite Pop Art artists.

Pop Art inspired by A.Warhol created in Photoshop

Pop Art image created by R.Lichenstein

For me, black and white imagery captures clear, simple and effective design. I particularly love the classic black and white images of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. I found the images below on popartuk.com and visualiseus.com. These are great websites for sourcing pop art material.

Creative Experimentation

I came across a black and white image of Marilyn with the colour on the lips and background picked out. I thought this was a really striking image that had the perfect mix of bright and bold and simple design. Using, Photoshop, I edited some photos that I had taken. I converted them to black and white and following a tutorial I found online, I picked out some colour.

 

I've been looking at websites such as smashingbuzz, webdesignerwall and sixvisions to find some inspirational fonts. I enjoy doodling, mostly when I should be listening, so I really like fonts that look like they've been hand sketched. These are some of the best ones that I found....