School of Design – Inspiration Everywhere 1
Welcome to Design House Digital’s School of Design. Today, and every single day in September, we’ll have new blog posts; Informative, detailed, and FREE classes that will take your digital scrapbooking to the next level. Each subject will have a new post weekly (plus two bonus classes to kick things off), and at the end of the month you won’t believe how much you’ve learned!
Mondays: The Theory of Color – Arielle Gordon
Tuesdays: Making Templates Your Own – Crystal Livesay
Wednesdays: Creative Clustering – Mye De Leon
Thursdays: The Grammarian’s Guide to Great Journaling – Audrey Neal
Fridays: Inspiration Everywhere – Mary Rogers
Saturdays: Brushes 101 – Jen Flaherty
Sundays: Photography: Tips & Tricks – Jennifer Valencia
Happy Friday everyone! I am so excited to be a part of the School of Design Series. My posts are going to be focusing on where you can find inspiration for creating layout design. Today I am going to focus on sources. Next week I am going to show you how I took a magazine page design, converted it into a template and used it to create my A Week in the Life album. Besides looking in the Design House Digital Gallery , where else do you look for inspiration?
One of my go to places is Pinterest. I am seriously addicted to that site and try to spend just a few minutes there every day. Some of my favorite boards, that I find I pin to the most are Digital Design Inspiration , Photography, Color Inspiration, and Lift This (Scrapbooking) . If you are on Pinterest too, leave your name in the comments section so I can follow you!
I also love to look at magazines. I remember as a teenager picking up issues of Tiger Beat and Seventeen Magazine. When I went to college, Seventeen was replaced with Cosmopolitan. While I don’t purchase those type of magazines anymore, I do find myself browsing that section at our local bookstore at least once a month. I currently have subscriptions for Real Simple, HGTV and Creating Keepsakes. I can always find inspiration in Real Simple and love that I also get the digital issue on my Kindle each month. I find that the easiest way for me to save an ad or page from these issues is to rip the page right out. I have a binder that I save them all in!
Another place I find inspiration for my layouts is while out shopping. It could be a store display, a color palette or just words on a wall. Once while I was taking some photos at a mall in Wisconsin (the words on the walls of the food court were so awesome) I was approached by security. “Excuse me, we were just informed that you are taking photos of random people in the mall. This is private property so we are going to have to ask you to please stop.” I explained what I was taking a photo of, apologized if I concerned them and went on my merry way. I usually make a note of something I saw in a small journal that I keep in my purse if I can’t get a photo.
Do you get those sometimes annoying emails from clothing companies? I do so I can get the discount codes, but you know what? Some of the coolest ads I have seen came from emails from American Eagle and Hollister.
What about song lyrics? Yep, I find a ton of inspiration there as well. Usually on my drive to work every morning I hear a song, or a phrase that I just love and think “that would be a fabulous title.” I even have a Lyric Inspired Album that I have been creating for my son for the past 4 years!
Inspiration is everywhere. You just have to learn to look at things from a creative point of view. Look around and see what inspires you. If you leave a comment noting where you find your inspiration, I will compile a list and post it next week.
To finish this week, I am going to share with you a recent layout I created completely inspired by a editorial ad I pinned and a composite photo that we just did for my nephew. Have a great week everyone.
@Derek Chan on Gridness
and my layout inspired by the design:
and our photo composition was inspired by this photo
@Dixie Lane Photography
and here is mine:
@Superior Lens Photography
