Shortly after ordering our first batch of Moo cards, I came across the concept of ‘moo trading’ on Flickr:

• You photograph your moos
• Add them to moo trading groups on Flickr
• People leave notes on your moos requesting those they’d like to trade with you

At first we stuck our traded moos up on the side of a cupboard in the office as something nice to look at. The collection gradually began to grow out of control to the point where we could no longer fit them all on the cupboard anymore. We’d collected quite a few cards with the same theme, so we decided to put them together in a book and create mini moo moodboards.

These cards have proved a great tool for inspiration – we’ve created themed pages including found typography, vintage, nature and patterns. They’re also the perfect brain storming tool because you can take them out and rearrange them as many times as you like.

So if you fancy finding inspiration beyond books and websites, why not try dabbling in moo trading.

This is the second year we have visited the exhibition and thought we would share some of our favorite pieces from this years show.

Green Protest Suit, UK

“Mullins has created the Protest Suit, whereby applying HollyWood Green Screen to the felt suit implies that it can display political messages when filmed. Therefore, by wearing the suit within the borders of what would normally be regarded as cut-off limits for displaying political messages, this suit can convey any form of communication when filmed”.

Jar Tops, Holland

“These are a simple but ingenious way of transforming ordinary empty jars into functional products. There are five variations allowing the creation of a milk jog, sauce jug, sugar shaker, oil/vinegar pourer or chocolate/herb shaker. The tops are made to fit jars designed using the ‘Twist Off’ standard, and international standard that is used for food jars with metal or plastic screw caps and can be recognised by two or more screw thread ridges on the neck of the jar”.

Workit Office System, Switzerland

“Individual work stations can be expanded as desired and flexibly combined with one another, where the accessible price range of the system is in part also the result of the design concept and product philosophy”.

Aesop Retail Stores and Branding, Australia

“The retail display units at the store on Flinders Lane, Melbourne were entirely constructued from the cardboard packaging, 3000 cardboard boxes in total, used to distribute and ship the Aesop products”.

Appeel, Germany

Described as,

“A virus spreaing through interacting individuals”, Appeel demonstrates the basic principles of interactivity largely reliant on the behaviour of the user. A surface is covered by a large number of coloured stickers, positioned in a grid. People are invited to remove the stickers, leaving white dots in the layout, as a result individually and collectively changing the walls appearance”.

Music video for Radiohead House of Cards, UK

“A ground breaking technique is employed in which no cameras or lights are used. Instead the three dimensional images are captured using scanners which use two types of technology. The first being Geometric Informatics, where scanning thechniques produce structured light to capture three dimensional images at close proximity…the second technology is Velodyne LIDAR, a system that uses multiple lasers to capture larger environments”.

So if you haven’t been aleady, pop along! The exhibition runs until 14th June 09.

Jay Street subway

Old signage from the New York Transport Museum

“Walk” / “Wait” – New York Transport Museum

59th Street subway

Signage from the New York Transport Museum

Old signage from the New York Transport Museum

Cinema typography

I think it is very easy to become over saturated. I read design magazines, I subsribe to design feeds, our office is full of books, we have posters on the walls and I collect lots of things that inspire me. I feel that looking for inspiration in these places can sometimes be part of the problem. You are bombarded with nice typography, great layouts, colour schemes and fantastic ideas. This gets your creative juices flowing and you start to think about all the little elements you want to add to your final solution. But no matter how hard you try to shoe horn them all in, they just don’t fit.

Talking

Sitting silently at our mac with our tunnel vision hats on not suprisingly doesn’t do much good. When we get a new brief, we’ll talk about the project, our ideas and usually come up with ideas we wouldn’t have thought of if we’d just sat in silence. Sometimes I can be talking about something I am having difficulty with and from doing that I can end up answering my questions I didn’t think I had the answer to.

Doing something else

…even if it’s just answering emails. We often find having a short break and doing something else for a while gives us a fresh perspective on what we are doing.

We have been doing some branding for a natural body care site we will be launching very soon. We had done plenty of brain storming, sketched, looked in plenty of books but didn’t feel like we had quite arrived at our solution. At the weekend when I was in the shower that I noticed the way some some soap suds formed on a bar of soap. Seeing this then gave me some ideas and we went and created the final brand.

Eating

toggle loves eating. If we get stuck, we will grab some food – usually Cadburys buttons from the local shop :) Taking time out to feed our brains seems to work wonders for producing ideas.

Walking

We are lucky enough to have the River Thames at the back of the office. Not only a great place to eat lunch but also a great place to go for some ‘thinking space’.

Sketching

We think sketchbooks are a great dumping ground for ideas. I think it gives you a different kind of freedom than you get from the computer because it’s a quick fire round of ideas. By looking at these ideas in their most basic form, you get a better idea of whether it is going to work or not. I think jumping into Photoshop too early can lead to more focus being placed on colours and effects rather than the actual idea.

Moodboards

Moodboards are great guides for a brief becuase they stop you going too far off from where you need to be. This goes back to what I said earlier about becoming saturdated with ideas. It can be quite easy to get carried away and lose sight of what is really appropriate; moodboards are a nice visual reminder of where you need to be.

Having a process

Processes are probably one of the most important aspects in design and they don’t have to limit your creativity. Having a process means you have all of the key elements you need in place. For example, when we design websites, we create tone of voice boards, site maps, work out what type of content will be going on the site – video, plain text, images etc. Once we have this information we start to create wireframes. All of these steps ensure we have really thought about the funcationality of the site. After we have got this right we move onto the design, colours schemes, imagery and typography. Working in this way means we don’t leave anything out and we have a site that works the way it needs to as well as looking great.

What are your tips for creative block?