Books Over Browsers

Books Over Browsers

Last week, I forced myself to gather brand design inspiration without the internet. I went for a walk to the bookstore. I took pictures of plants and signs and interesting shapes on the way there. At the bookstore, I browsed dusty used books about gardening, post-modern art, regional architecture and botany.

I came home and sketched some illustrations within the margins of one of the books I bought.

Yep, I held a physical pen to physical paper, and it honestly was really scary. Without limitless browser tabs in the background for reference, the endless possibility of it all felt scary and daunting.

But I pushed through, and I ended up designing quite a few concepts for two different clients that I am really proud of. It also turned out nothing like what I thought it would based on a Pinterest inspiration board, but in a good way.

It is the practice of starting something from scratch, struggling, and pushing past failure that actually teaches you a skill, builds confidence and shows you a pathway to true creativity. My lesson? More books, fewer tabs.

A Resource

I finally broke up with Dropbox and converted to Air this week.

As someone with thousands (maybe millions, even?) of images and fonts and client assets, its tagging system is pretty amazing. Air automatically tags every asset you upload using artificial intelligence, so you can do a search for something like "dog" or "tree illustration" and it will pull up any asset you have that matches, lightning fast.

The interface is also just a joy. It's really visual compared to Dropbox and I found myself really enjoying the process of getting my digital life tidied up.

Random Roundup

Have a great week!

Ashli