Design Ideas Source Book

August 6, 2006 5:03 PM

How do I categorise printed designs?

I'm a design student and I think I read somewhere (? apparently not at metafilter) to collect successful designs for inspiration etc. I have a bazillion magazines I'm willing to rip apart, glue, paper and a binder, but how do I categorise what I pick? Do I sort by colour? Or topic - food, cosmetics, cars? Or font family?

No doubt I could apply this to my evergrowing list of bookmarks as well.

Any ideas, suggestions gratefully received.

posted by b33j to media & arts (3 comments total)

How do you anticipate wanting to refer to it in the future? If you have a good memory, you could do it by company or product name, but if you don't think you can remember that Vendex used King Kong Bundy in their ads years after the fact, you might want to try putting them in order by industry or subject matter.
posted by MegoSteve at 5:20 PM on August 6, 2006

It's going to take a bazillion years to go through a bazillion magazines - I would really be selective with the clipping file, or it will just turn into an impossible goal. And like MegoSteve says, whatever you will remember, but for me, it would be more the tone of the design than something as specific as subject matter. If you get the tone right, you could apply it just as well to a food ad as car or cosmetic ad. Here's the way I might think about it:

Typography: Traditional / Classic / Contemporary / Cutting Edge
Good use of Illustration
Good use of photography
Bold and Graphic
Quirky / Funny
Subtle / Spare Design
Collaged
Good use of Grid
Serious
Conceptual
etc. etc.
posted by extrabox at 7:43 PM on August 6, 2006

If this is not for an assignment and/or must be completed within a week or two, you might consider one step BEFORE putting something into your binder. Find a wall or two that you can hang your items on and just let it sit for a while. Over time, things will either resonate with you, or you will find that some become boring, or monotonous. Weed out the ones that, at first, looked interesting, or cool, but are now not cutting it for you. Then you can begin to refine the palette.
Out of the four designers in my office, all four of us have samples of design that we have plucked from the ether and stuck to the interior walls of our lowly cubicles. And they change as time wears on. Ideas are used and discarded, as new ones are harvested and displayed for inspiration.
posted by UnclePlayground at 2:27 PM on August 8, 2006