I’ve got a wide range of inspiration from Flickr selected for you today. From the 1940s to current trends in graphic design, you’re sure to find some new visual stimulation you’ve never seen before!
Vintage Collections
The past is a great source of inspiration. As you look through the following collections, think about what elements are making a comeback. What elements should be making a comeback? Challenge yourself: try using something new from the past in your next design.
Vintage Magazines includes magazine covers and ads.
Vintage Book Covers reminds me of the 700 Penguins book I received as a prize from iLT a while back. There is just something so personal about these books that have been used and loved for generations.
Propaganda Posters provide some laughter, but remember these were really used to persuade people to follow causes and support leaders! What was so compelling about them? Can you incorporate that aspect in your next design?
Wedge Heels & Wartime - Forties in Print is a really cool collection to flip through. There are postcards, ads (I love how the look of Spam has hardly changed!), magazine covers, books covers, movie posters, photos, comics and even ration stamps!
Vintage Postcards are a great source for old photos and illustration styles.
Graphic Design Blog Pools
Here’s where your trendy showcases come in. Unfortunately many users submit their artwork to all of these blog pools listed below, but still, there is unique content in each of them, too.
PSDTuts readers regularly contribute to the official Flickr group.
The BittBox pool is also frequently updated with
GoMedia set up their pool to showcase the use of their ever popular Design Arsenal products.
Veerle’s What is Graphic Design? poster competition isn’t updated a whole lot now that the contest has been over for some months, but it’s still great to see the level of talent out there!
Excellent resources, Lauren! Definitely bookmarked.
Great collection of inspiration pieces! I am also bookmarking! Thanks!
So much creativity is—no, not stealing—but absorbing, even paying homage to, what’s been done before.
David,
Thanks and you’re welcome!
Blue Buffalo,
You’re most welcome.
Stephen,
Absorbing… ooo, good word. I would add to that assimilating.
Hey! Long time no see! Welcome back
And one I forgot to add: Abduzeedos pool. There seems to be more variation here than in the other blog pools.
Ah gee, I guess I should get back into flickr. I haven’t used it much because I couldn’t maintain both my flickr and photoblog, but now that flickr is being used for so much more than photography, it’s a great community.
Absorbing, assimilating… I like it!
hehe, it’s interesting how six out of ten propaganda posters were Russian
Great collection of design inspiration. Thanks, Lauren.
It has been a while. I’ve been working pretty steadily for close to two years: doing the kind of design and layout and straight layout projects that I aimed at for a long while. In that time, I’ve kind of neglected my own blog, as well as following my favorite blogs, yours included.
So I’ve finished my work on a chemistry textbook layout. I’m now winding down the the design and layout of a fitness-for-seniors/life extension book. And I find myself, for the first time in some time, searching fr the next book. I don’t want to come to complete standstill.
Then, too, I have to make a decision about what to pursue in lieu of paying work should the summer and the economy combine to slow down the market and choke off freelance work for a while. Should I pick up my PHP studies and get serious about transitioning into web design? My enthusiasm for that has waned.
Lately I’ve become very interested in the whole social networking thing. Seems it can be a full-time job, however, and an end in itself: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, a whole slew more I can’t remember, and prob’ly another batch I don’t even know about. So far, I find LinkedIn worthless, tho’ I’ve continued building my “connections” and I admit to be quite taken by Twitter. (I even blogged loosely about this here.
With your large audience LaurenMarie, I’d love to see you post some about all these social networking tools and how graphic artists have successfully used them to move their careers forward.
Kris,
As you can see my own Flickr account is pretty sparce, but I sure love looking at other people’s stuff!
Vivien,
I didn’t dig too far back into those propaganda posters, but I bet there’s a fair amount of Chinese ones, too.
Stephen,
I know! I took a quick peek at your blog. You’ve sure been busy (but congrats on all your success!). I don’t know much about social media, actually. I would like to know, but I just don’t have the time to spend creating networks online. Even though they are not specific to the graphic arts, there are quite a few blogs popping up on social media. I’m surprised you haven’t had much success with LinkedIn. I hear it’s the number one choice for a lot of designers. Dawud Miracle is a great source for social media and business advantages (he’s a web designer and business consultant, so it’s a great perspective he offers).
Good to get a reminder about Flickr as a source of inspiration and styles. I’ve gone to Flickr in the past to look up retro badgets/buttons with great results.
I hadn’t cottoned on to the blog pools that you’d mentioned, but I’ll give them a look too.
Bookmarked!
Wow what a great set of inspirational pieces - such a varied range, thank you for posting them!
Tracey,
The down side about the pools is people tend to read the same sites, so they upload the same stuff to each of those pools. But there’s good work in them. Do you remember the links to those retro buttons? If you have it, please share!
Greg,
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to check out Great Art You Just Don’t Want to Miss! and Not to be Missed Design Inspirations from Flickr.
Lucinda,
There’s a ton of variety on Flickr! It’s great! I do hope you click on the links to check out the rest of the pieces. Those were just snapshots meant to whet your appetite :D
Wow, this really is amazing. Nice work, I’m sure this will help serve as a great sources of inspiration for a lot people.
Keep it up!
What a good surprise! One of these posters is mine, the one that says “beating indifference”… good resources, by the way!
I’ve always been inspired by vintage illustration. I even have an old Jell-O ad framed and hanging on my wall that I found at an estate sale. I did a lot of research into vintage ads of the early 1900’s for a design piece I did one time and I found a lot of gorgeous resource material on Flickr.
liam,
Thanks! Hope you were inspired, too.
Diogo,
It’s always fun to see your work featured, no?
Doug,
Have you seen the interview I did with Ross MacDonald? He designs and prints vintage props for movies. Do you have an examples of your work online anywhere? Want to share the link?
Hi Lauren. If you click my name next to my avatar here it takes you to my portfolio site where you can view my work. The piece I was referring to was done for a contest at PhotoshopCafe. I talked about this particular piece in one of my blog posts. The theme of the contest was to design a period style billboard so I chose the early 1900’s and even bought some beautiful vintage typefaces from LetterheadFonts and a few Victorian vector accents from a guy at iStock.
Neither of my entries placed at the Cafe (I also did a Retro 60’s billboard), but afterward I was contacted by Denise from LetterheadFonts and she asked if they could display the vintage billboard in their gallery section. I was honored and of course said yes immediately. She also used it as an example image on the Billhead font page, which was one of the fonts I’d bought and used in the design.
Loved the interview you did with Ross MacDonald. I was aware of his work, but I didn’t know he did Book of Secrets. Now I’ll have to watch the movie again to see his name (lol).
I have been fascinated with old things since I was a kid. I owe it to my mom because we used to go all over God’s creation hunting for antique bottles. We’d search for the old properties and then look for where they dumped their bottles. Usually it was down a hill or alongside a ravine. Over the course of our time bottle hunting I collected enough old potbelly stove parts to put one together. Great times.
Hmm, that was weird. I made a reply and it didn’t appear. Maybe the spam cops ate it.
Doug,
No, it’s there… I don’t know why that happens sometimes. You can see where the comment should be, but for some reason it just won’t display in the page (I can see it just fine from the Admin panel). It has something to do with the links. I’ll have to fix it from phpMyAdmin.
I actually don’t think Ross is credited anywhere in Book of Secrets. I watched the movie recently and kept an eye out in the credits. But I could’ve missed it in all those names!
Oh I like all the little critters in your site! Hehe, Underdog ;)
Ah, so it was the CODE cops. Got it. Thanks for letting me know.
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