5 Pinterest Boards of Design Inspiration

Pinterest has been a great way to create mood boards, bookmark influential designs, and create inspirational design sources for other creative minded individuals. It's easy to get lost in the plethora of beautiful stuff that it offers which is why we've chosen 5 of our favourite Pinterest boards which act as a good resource for those needing inspiration for their design projects.

Want yours included in our next inspirational Pinterest board blog article? Leave a link to it in the comments below.

1. /paulsvo/illustration/

   This fantastic selection of illustrations by Paulsvo gives all sorts of creative ammunition to artists and designers whose weapon of choice is nothing more than a pen and some paper...maybe even a graphics tablet too.



Click here for Paulsvo's Pinterest Board





2. /butteredmuffin/inspiring-art/

   Inside of Butteredmuffin's board there is an eclectic combination of artistic styles ranging from graffiti, street art through to sculptures, etc. The main image that grabbed my attention is the one shown below.



Click here for Butteredmuffin's Pinterest Board





3. /raychap/graffiti-or-art/

   Raychap has a range of graffiti art from different street artists on his board which asks the old question Graffiti or art?



Click here for Raychap's Pinterest Board





4. /retorta/poster/

   This board is full of really cool and artistic posters of all kinds, mainly of events. Retorta's board is definitely one for designers looking to create cool posters.



Click here for Retorta's Pinterest Board





5. /peaceluvharmony/artsy-fartsy/

   Peaceluvharmony's board has got some more great examples of street art the most interesting to us is the one shown below.



Click here for Peaceluvharmony's Pinterest Board

The Psychology of Colour in Design Test

Colour is something we all as human beings take for granted as we are born with this fascinating privilege of colourful sight, unless if you’re born blind of course. For the majority of us, colour is a major catalyst of universal design that evokes a wide variety of emotions – although it is perceptual to each individual’s experiences in life i.e. red can be associated to passion and love for one person and mean something completely different to another individual, most likely in another part of the world.

By understanding the environment in which we intend to unleash our designs, we can spark the desired emotional response to create an affinity from consumer to creation – something that many businesses seek to create in order to maximise the sale of their products or services.

For designers in the Western world who intend to release their illustrations on their local demographic, the desire is there to always follow the curve, as businesses do, and create a red heart for example as you know that it is socially acceptable and the affinity to love is expected. But is there something more to be had from confusing the senses of your expecting audience? This is where the study of psychological response to colour can make your design become “off the wall”.

Using the example of the heart, I’ve presented a few images I’ve pulled from Flickr below which show a standard illustrative heart in different colours.

Let me know what your emotional response is to each of them in the comments below telling me which country you’re from so we can see if there’s any difference between nationalities.

 1. Green Heart

2. Red Heart

3. Wood Heart

It will be interesting to see what the results of this psychological test present. I will present an in-depth discussion on the topic following its results in a month's time. Please comment your responses to the designs presented above below.

Newbie Photographer Resources and Advice

Prior to this blog I was a photographer for a small nightclub in the London area and it taught me a lot about how to use my Canon 1000D SLR in low lighting to get some really cool shots (with the aid of a flashgun of course).

As well as trial and error I searched the web for advice and tutorials on how to use my SLR camera effectively to create impressive photos that patrons of the club would want to use and share. This lead to the discovery of multiple blogs, infographics and video tutorials which I'd like to share with you awesome readers in this blog post. Just keep in mind that when I started my photography job I was a noob so some of this information might not be of interested to advanced SLR users, however, it's always good to go back to the basics every now and then.

The Photography Cheat Sheet

This is a recent infographic that I stumbled upon by Miguel Gantioqui which explains the basic settings of SLRs and the effect it will have on the image you shoot. This is a great resource for SLR owners who are deciding to use the manual settings of the camera for the first time. More experienced users will understand that it is a balance of the different functions within this infographic that contribute to the quality/ style of image you want to produce. Therefore, for the noobs out there, don't stick to just modifying one setting. Play around.

http://miguelinclosedcaption.tumblr.com/post/3526501838/infographic-poster-2-photography-cheat-sheet

YouTube Channels for Video Tutorials

Like anyone else looking on how to do stuff, I YouTubed it. So rather than having you waste your time looking for the decent quality channels on photography I'm going to give you a quick list of the ones I'd recommend:

• http://www.youtube.com/user/PhotographersOnUTube
• http://www.youtube.com/user/philippedame 

Short list right? If anyone has any other channels they'd recommend or individual videos they rate highly for noob SLR photographers then please add then to the comments section of this post. After all it's all about learning right?

Photography Forums

There's a lot of value to be gained from becomming a member of online communities as you can get honest feedback and advice from a broad spectrum of users, from noob to expert. There are a couple that I checked out which were pretty good reads so if you feel like it sign up to them and get asking. If not just have a read of the stuff they're talking about, you'll learn quite a bit this way.

The forums I took at look at were:

• http://www.avforums.com/forums/digital-photography/ 
• http://photography-on-the.net/forum/ 

If anyone has a range of forums they checked out when they were starting out/ that they are still a member of, please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below.

That's all for now...

I hope you've found some use in the resoureces that I've provided above. I hope new users of SLRs can learn a whole lot from this and then go on to adapt these teachings to find their own methods. Don't forget the value in post-production as photo editing software such as Photoshop can add a whole other dimension to your images. I'll discuss this in another blog article some other day. Happy learning!