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Boagworld is the web design blog of Paul (the Wurzel) Boag who lives in the heart of rural Dorset. He produces a weekly podcast with Marcus (pop star) Lillington on all things relating to building and running websites. They also run web design agency - Headscape.

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How to Manage Your Inspiration

Posted in Random on: Tuesday, September 8, 2009 by Paul Boag

How do you find your design inspiration? More importantly how do you manage those sources of inspiration?

At Headscape we believe in including our clients throughout the process. We also don’t like to jump straight into design comps. Instead we prefer to look for elements that can potentially inspire the development of our client’s sites.

The question is, how to manage all of these design elements?

What did you think about this post?

13 Comments

Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email

  • Janez Novak says:

    Aaaaaand the link to this software is …?

    • Great tip – I’ve started using “Image Spark” but the whole web page capture looks like something I could use and is missing from I.S.

      Janez – try http://www.google.com It’s great for finding things instantly – even quicker than it took you to post your reply! ;D

    • David says:

      Great tips Paul, thanks. Have been using Little Snapper for a while now, and organise it in a similar way to yourself … but I have not (yet) been using it to guide / interact with clients. There’s a part of me that wants to avoid it – I know that some clients will just say ‘why can’t we use that image/design/layout’ … and then I’m caught in a conversation regarding inspiration vs. plagiarism! :) But this is a good part of the process, I think.

      Also, was at FOWD, Belfast, last week where Malarkey was talking about designing inside the browser – ditching photoshop/fireworks from the design process (or rather, from the part of the process that interfaces with the client) and I think integrating something like this could help the work methods he was describing.

      Good stuff. David.

  • Dan Whitmore says:

    Excellent video, thanks Paul.

    I love nicking bits and bobs off the various sites I discover on my travels, but have always ended up with images scattered all over the shop – and am unable to locate them ever again :).

    This looks like a great solution – I just wish I had a Mac now :).

    There seems to be a snapper for Windows, but no app unfortunately – still, Ember looks like it’ll be great for inspiration.

    Thanks, Dan

  • Heam says:

    Thanks Paul .. a nice show again..

  • Doug S. says:

    Ember can be found here: http://emberapp.com/
    LittleSnapper can be found here: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/

  • Phil Hallam says:

    Great advice as ever Paul. I use a similar method for windows that involves a combination of the screengrab extension for firefox and dropbox. This ensures I can always get access to my sources of inspiration regardless of my location. I will certainly use your method once I have purchased my first mac in a few months time. Keep up the good work. Phil

    • aurel says:

      some time a go you mentioned something like this on your podcast and it was a different program (i cant remember the name) and you also recommended using microsoft office OneNote where you can basically capture in a simular way

      though this littleSnapper seems to me much more pleasing (from the video it looks like the itunes player)

      is there anything like this for windows

      great topic

  • Awesome! I’ve been using Little Snapper for a bit now but didn’t even know about the Ember site.

    Could you link us to the Flickr feed you mentioned?

  • jimmytidey says:

    And how about this Patrick Haley chap – Google doesn’t seem to be helping me with his flickr feed…

  • aurel says:

    did not mean to add the comment there Sorry!

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Additional Information

Produced by Headscape

Boagworld is produced by the web design agency Headscape founded by Marcus, Paul and Chris Scott. Headscape also has a number of other talented guys who blog. Check them out.

  • Craig Rowe is one of our amazing developers and writes some superb posts on everything from .net to AIR apps.

  • Ed Merritt is a Headscape designer who's blog contains examples of his work and a number of free Wordpress themes.

  • Dave McDermid is a Headscape developer who has an excellent blog. He blogs on everything from AJAX to security.

  • Rob Borley is one of our project managers and blogs regularly on client and project management issues.

  • Leigh Howells is our multimedia design guru (whatever one of those is). He blogs on a mixture of design and music.

Paul elsewhere

Paul just can't shut up. He publishes regular audioboos, has a personal blog and is addicted to twitter. He also writes and speaks regularly. Check out the most recent below:

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