Left to right: Eric Gehrman, Jody Adams, and Cecy Correa.
It’s easy to start feeling worn-out and uninspired towards the end of the year, so we’re switching things up for this week’s installment of What Inspires You and packing three times the inspiration into one post. Meet Developer
Eric Gehrman, Producer Jody Adams, and Account Executive Cecy Correa.
Where do you find inspiration?
Eric Gehrman: Poorly-coded websites and sites that give users a horrible experience. I love finding flaws in a website’s architecture/user flow. Oddly enough, this inspires me to do great work and not recreate something that I’ve found appalling. I also find my inspiration on the other side of that. A site that flows perfectly, seamlessly, and without hiccups also gets my brow raised.
Jody Adams: Art, music, film and photography.
Cecy Correa: I feel keeping your ears open can also help you keep your mind open. I love live music. I’ll take any opportunity I can to go see a band play live – regardless of the band. I love podcasts—This American Life, Planet Money, Radiolab, Pop Culture Happy Hour, and Stuff You Should Know. If you don’t listen to podcasts, but you’re going to listen to one, it should be SYSK. They talk about any topic from “How Mosquitos Work” to “How Blood Pattern Analysis Works” and even “How to Start Your Own Country.” It’s comedic and offers great insights into topics I might otherwise not know about.
Which websites have inspired you recently?
Eric: The Wilderness Downtown is an awesome blend of Google maps, music, and HTML5. I’m a HTML5 enthusiast and seeing its potential in action is pretty inspiring.
The guys over at Method and Craft are always posting interesting stuff.
Jody: The 99 Percent, Behance’s research arm and think tank. The name was inspired by Thomas Edison’s famous quote, “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.”
The Big Orange Slide covers the worlds of strategy, design, digital, and advertising culture.
Tool and Tack seeks to highlight artisans, rebels, and quality craft of all kinds. They focus on goods made to last and daily inspiration.
Cecy: Brand New is a great way to start the day creatively. The blog takes a look at corporate identity, focusing on re-branding.
Instagram-a-Day is a newly-launched effort from several designers and developers around the US, posting, er, a Instagram picture a day. I contribute to this group, but I also find seeing multiple contributors documenting their lives through Instagram quite inspiring. Some designers post sketches or other pieces of artwork, while others find beauty in the ordinary.
Which trends in interactive are you currently paying attention to?
Eric: Facebook Connect (authentication via Facebook to third party sites), HTML5, and responsive design.
Jody: Responsive web design and cloud storage.
Cecy: Augmented Reality and gamification. I feel those two elements combined will represent the way we tell stories in the future. As opposed to just watching a film, audiences (or customers) will interact with the story and be a part of the story. That’s where I see the future of storytelling—customers taking an active role in interacting with a story, product, service or idea.