There are countless places (and things) that inspire creativity. Seek out artistic inspiration in commonplace, day-to-day living, even if—at first glance—these sources seem anything but interesting. Here are just a few that come to mind:

Vanity license plates
Vanity plates are everywhere and are consistently far more interesting than they have any right to be. The best ones aren’t the ones that are immediately comprehensible (though the immediate payoff of a genuinely funny or weird vanity plate is often worth it), but ones that read like puzzles and take time to decode. These often stay with me for days, if not months, and often end up manifesting themselves in some art project I undertake later on.

Old cookbooks
Dated, unfashionable cookbooks—the kind that probably exist in yours or your friends’ houses somewhere—are often full of deeply strange narratives, dated trends, a collection of quotes or photographs so out of step with a contemporary worldview that it’s hard not to laugh at them.  Sometimes you get lucky and find entire histories within them. Consider Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices, which claims to feature the Virgin Mary’s favorite Spinach recipe and proposes that teriyaki is the worst method of meat preparation before explaining how to make it. It’s hard not to be completely fascinated and to feel challenged to take on something similarly epic and bizarre after reading.

Crowded coffee shops
Coffee shops have the bonus of coffee itself, which may aid your creativity you if you’re one of those need-my-caffeine types. Coffee certainly helps me get into a mindset for creating art, and being surrounded by noise may yield fragments of conversations to listen in on and borrow from, musical ideas to explore later, and other jumping off points.

Dive bars
Bars and coffee shops have similar draws: beverages, loud noise and ambiance. However, a drink or two (and not much more than that, or things can get sticky) can help address one’s inhibitions when trying to start a piece of writing or a project. There’s also the goldmine that is bar graffiti, where a stray phrase or a particularly unique arrangement of words (likely grammatically incorrect and profane) can suddenly seem like the strangest, funniest, or most moving thing in the world; when it does, borrow it.

Bike paths, trails, and other outdoor surroundings
From time to time, it seems utterly vital to the creative process (if not to all processes, creative or otherwise), to step outside for fresh air. Getting your blood moving helps to get the brain going as well, and it’ll be far less difficult to create when you’ve taken a minute to process. You may even stumble upon a source of inspiration you’d never considered before.

Gerald Arnolds is a guest blogger for An Apple a Day and a writer on online nursing classes for the Guide to Health Education.

                          

The Anti-Alien Helmet, commonly called the tin foil hat, is fashionable, unique head wear that protects your stray thoughts from alien interception. It is made up of state-of-the-art aluminum foil wrapped into a spiral shape that fits snugly over the top of your head and terminates in a point at the top. The spiraling aluminum foil design has been proven to keep alien thought-detecting probes out and your private thoughts in.

The Anti-Alien Helmet is beneficial to people from many walks of life, including:

• Government agents – keep those classified government secrets safe from aliens.
• Conspiracy theorists – keep those conspiracy theories safe from government employed aliens.
• Pets – pets overhear everything said nearby. Keep aliens from seeping overheard words through your pets.

                          

Gotham font

Unfortunately, I have a lot of fonts that are not Gotham and I am not in the market for a new font. In search of a replacement, I asked the twitterverse what they were liking today. Not surprisingly, the majority of votes were in favor of sans serif. Here is a sampling of the responses:

Mrldoerer says: I just designed a print/web statement app for a credit union using Bell Gothic. Favorite font of the day for me.

Livefire says: Caecilia surprisingly… I’ve been using it a bunch lately.

JustTamar says: I am totally loving Avenir today.

Aaroni268 is using Din.

Add your comments. What is your favorite font right now?

                          

15+ Amazingly clever logos

50 Kick Ass Logos for Inspiration

                          

The front of the holiday card sent out by Korby Imagery for the 2007-2008 holiday season.

This red wine themed card was designed for the 2007-2008 holiday season and was mailed to clients and colleagues around the world. Some were sent with a bottle of wine, all were sent with personalized notes.

This is the inside of the same card showing the die cut and attached wine glass stem marker.

This design combines custom illustration and stock art carrying the Korby Imagery http://korbyimagery.com/ brand. The card is hand-cut and the wine stem markers were created by a local wire artist http://iamwiredup.com/ . A variety of stem markers were used. Some markers were flat and had the words “create” or “inspire”.

I will be sending cards out again this year, but haven’t decided on a design yet. A new identity is being rolled out, so I am sure it will be something very different from last year.