If you’ve ever been in our office, you know that one of the first things you’ll see when you walk in is our inspiration board. Located right beyond our front door, it’s a 3D collage of each Seedhouser’s collected bits of inspiration.
[ Inspiration Board from 2017. From Upper Right: Overland Ad, Taco seasoning packet, paper Odds & Ends, Motorcycle Art Print, magazine cutting, Blue Watercolor Art Print, More odds & ends, Wooly Mammoth Silkscreen Art Print,, Various Ads, Koval Packaging photography, (more) magazine ads, playing cards, Spirograph illustration, our boat-floater bathroom key, etc ]
Inspiration is meant to be shared.
As designers, we seek inspiration everywhere. We are constantly observing, collecting, and filing away inspiration for a rainy day—and we’re firm believers that inspiration is meant to be shared. This means that each day has the potential to feature a little “show and tell” moment. Sometimes this is in the form of all of us getting together first thing in the morning to admire a shipping box someone received the previous day in the mail… or sometimes it comes as a little afternoon coffee break, filled with laughs, as we realize something was surreptitiously placed on the inspiration board just waiting to be noticed.
[ Inspiration Board from 2018. From Upper Right: Abe Lincoln print by Aesthetic Apparatus, Tequila Marketing, Fabric Swatch from Maya Romanoff, Never Stop Learning postcard from Stone Creek Coffee, Marimeko dinner napkin, Hammerpress Aurora Borealis letterpress print + postcard, our “House Rules”, paper Odds & Ends, Independent Trucks Bay Bee tag, New Yorker Clippings, Pixel movie poster, an old school letraset, polaroids of Seedhousers out & about, and a patagonia ad ]
Design Inspiration can be found anywhere.
We take down the inspiration board each year and start fresh. The only constants from year to year (aside from our floaty keychain: the key to the bathroom) are our “House Rules:” key Seedhouse Design tenets that we’ve been using for ten and a half years now.
Our most recent inspiration board (which is also our current blog header image) runs the gamut: you’ll find packaging, quirky postcards from our travels, artwork, and cutouts from grocery bags—even empty coffee cups!
Sometimes we pick things up because they’re beautiful and eye catching. Sometimes we cut out pieces of life advice we find, or tack up packaging because it’s using a spot finish in a different way. A full life leads to better work—so we’ve got photos from our outings and souvenirs we’ve picked up along the way as reminders. It’s really about just keeping your mind and your eyes open to opportunities and learning as they come.
[ Inspiration Board from 2019-2020 (Because we’re currently out of office). From Upper Right: Business Duck portrait by Ryan Berkley, Go For It from You are Beautiful, Psychedelic Eye Art Print by Leela Hoehn Robinson of the Rainbow Vision, New Yorker Clippings + Cover, Aurora Borealis Hammerpress print, Japanese Somen Packaging, Chopstick Sleeve, Coffee Cup from Collectivo, Coffee Sleeve from Caribou, Silkscreen print from The Bird Machine, Postcard from Stone Creek Coffee, Plum Market grocery bag cut out, Seedhouse Polaroids continued, Boy Smells candle packaging (still smells great), Big Star taco postcard, Moon Toothpaste packaging, postcards from hawaii, a slice of cardboard pizza from The Bird Machine, vintage stitching diagrams, etc. ]
A collective visual journal.
Documenting our inspiration boards is like keeping a visual journal. You see certain trends come and go, and each Seedhouser has their own distinct impact on the board. As the years pass, sometimes you may even rediscover inspiration looking through older boards. Once we’re back in office, we can’t wait to fill up a new inspiration board with souvenirs from both our time at home, and in the new covid-safe world.
See something on our boards that wasn’t mentioned? Please let us know.
