(Blog by e Bond)

When I was younger I always had these boxes full of inspiration, usually torn pages from magazines, catalogs, anything I could rip out, keep and store. It was the beginning of a lifetime of trying to find the best system to organize my “inspiration” because it wasn’t so much just storing it, but how would I best be able to retrieve it later when I needed to access it? This was a lot for a 12 year old to manage while simultaneously trying to find ways to get her grandmother to let her cut up her good magazines for the “greater good of artists everywhere.”

I am still and probably will always be a huge fan of magazines and print media so my boxes have turned into rows and rows of notebooks filled with plastic sleeves that hold things I find just too beautiful to let go of. Pages upon pages of beautifully rendered typography, photographs, color or just a good quote or idea.  But then things got complicated. Enter the wide world web. Now this magic also comes in the form of website urls not to forget, videos, megabytes and audio files just as much as they do in the pages of old National Geographic issues. Now I need two systems of storing and organizing: a physical system and a virtual one.

Thank goodness for smart people like the folks over at tumblr, pinterest or craftgawker (there is a whole family of these gawker sites by the way). These sites aim to allow you to control and bookmark inspiration all over the web and contain it in one place. These sites can become your go to folder when you need a jolt of beauty.

Some of the sites are specific in their interests meaning they only are cater to certain topics while others allow you to be the curator of your own ephemera.
Pinterest lets you catalog the things you love on your own terms. Just like your favorite bulletin board above your desk, you can “pin up” things online to your virtual boards, note their origins, even share them. Pinterest is also a community based site, like say Twitter, where you can start to follow other people who are saving beautiful things or people who have common interests.

If you are more the kind of person who just likes to window shop great ideas or beautifully designed pages, spend some time viewing tumblr sites (there are millions, here is my good friend jia’s) or make your own tumblr page to curate your own visual ideas into a blog.

Ffffound is also a place where people bookmark images. You need an invitation to save and share but anyone can look around and get inspired.

We Heart it is like fffound but you don’t need an invitation to join the party there. And if you are trying to store and share those videos that you make, well then Vimeo might be the place for you.

So check out these smart sites that are allowing visual hoarders like myself the place and the means to organize their virtual magic boxes. They are also great places to window-shop even if you don’t want to join the fun.

How do you organize your virtual and physical inspiration?
Share your madness, let us know!

e