A Designer’s Block

I think I’m going through some kind of designer’s block this week. I have 3 active projects on the go, all in design phase, and all due before mid-November. I’m trying to find good inspiration for the projects, but instead I’m reading, blogging and napping! Just picked up Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst by Dan Reingold and so far, it’s a damn good read. It exposes some of the insider games on Wall Street and how deeply corrupted Wall Street and much of corporate America had become during the bullish stock market bubble of the 1990s. It also goes into detail on how analysts manipulate the stock price and how they do it to benefit large institutional investors. It’s almost impossible to believe these things really happened and still happen. I recommend it to anyone who is just getting into trading and serious about it. A little bit of history always helps.

Back to the designer’s block - I’m trying to find good inspiration these days and stumbled upon a few sites I think really deserve a mention. Check out:

Suiepaparude - A Romanian website with a lot of character and color.

A Dear Friend - Great portfolio from designer Chris Ro.

Let It Bleed - Beautifully executed site for Rolling Stones 1969 U.S. Tour.

Space Collective - A complex website that bills itself as “a cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan, forward-thinking terrestrials”. Right….

Viewzi - I’m really digging this new visual search engine.

And finally, the idiosyncratic Jason Santa Maria. Jason takes blogging to a whole new level by designing a unique page for every blog post. Now he is definitely not suffering from a designer’s block.

Check back in a few days for some new mockups of the projects I’m working on. If you have any good inspirational tips - please do comment below.