Great site for letterhead design inspiration

www.letterheady.com

(with thanks to Ariane for the heads-up)

Great examples of infographics

For more inspiration I recommend the following infographic books:
- Information Graphics: Innovative Solutions in Contemporary Design
- Information Design Workbook
- Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design

Utter Genius

This is one man's story shot in 60,000 pictures, developed in 9,600 prints and shot in over 1,800 pictures all over again. No post production...

Astonishing.

Breathtaking real time Earth simulation

Watch population and greenhouse gas emissions grow on this fascinating website that provides CO2 emissions, birth and death rates by country, simulated real time. Worth checking out:

www.breathingearth.net

Days With My Father by Phil Toledano

Phil Toledano recently released a photo essay titled Days With My Father. A touching compilation of photos taken after the death of Toledano's mother, the images give an intimate look at the father-son relationship and serve as a time capsule of the period. Although very simple and sparse, the series captures huge emotion.

Created by Fashionbuddha, the elegant design and functionality of the site compliments the work by allowing the photos to stand on their own and speak for themselves. I found it to be inspiring and at times heart-wrenching.

www.dayswithmyfather.com

Design Inspiration

Company are a very talented London-based studio whose new site houses a fantastic range of really beautiful design work, and also some self initiated 'Friday afternoon' projects like ‘Hairface’ above.

Check out their work for some design inspiration, in particular for visual identity.

Need inspiration for fashion design websites?

Then take a look at the website of CreateThe Agency, , an interactive agency for luxury, fashion and retails brands. Lots of absolutely gorgeous work dahling.

FOUND

www.FFFFOUND.com is a fabulous imagebookmarking site that's consistently inspirational.

Invitations to participate and post images are rare, which keeps the quality of the images high.

Still on the 'found' theme, for all the voyeurs out there, www.foundmagazine.com collects found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - you get the idea - basically anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Interesting stuff, and again, a good source of inspiration for creative thinkers.

Useful tools for designers and creatives

I have set this out in two categories: INSPIRATION and RESOURCES. Feel free to add your own to the list, and tell me of your experiences using any of these sites and tools via the comments section below.

INSPIRATION:

Worlds best advertising is an advertising archive and forum discussing all the best work worldwide. Covers all media: Print, TV, Radio, Online, and Ambient.
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Find thousands of logos for study and inspiration at Logo Lounge
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An insightful and stimulating read on the logo trends of the year, can be found here
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In opposition to today's digital fonts, this site inspires by focussing on the beauty of Antique wood type
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The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising is an amazing brand and packaging collection over in Notting Hill, showcasing 200 years of consumerism, all reflected through packaging design, brand development, poster and TV advertising.
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The 24 Hour Museum alerts to news, listings and features from 3000+ museums and galleries. A fabulous guide to UK culture.
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If all of the above fail, just pick a good selection from wine.com!


RESOURCES:

Download eps logos for free at brandsoftheworld.com Here you'll find access to all the well known (and not so well known) brand logos in vector EPS formats.
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For high resolution textures Texture Space can't be beaten for an enormous selection of 3D textures. A very useful and thorough site.
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Fontifier lets you turn scanned samples of handwriting into a digital handwriting font.
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If you're trying to name or recognise a font, the font identifier site, Identifont enables you to locate it by answering a series of questions. Incredibly useful if you want to match an existing typeface, or identify a typeface you have seen in a publication.
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If you can't find locate a font by answering the questions in Identifont, then What the font? locates it for you by allowing you to scan a sample of it in (if you've seen it in a publication, for instance). Once submitted, it will supply you with the font name – a very useful tool and a real timesaver.
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Getty Images is an excellent search facility for an enormous range of photos, illustrations and films covering every type of theme.
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iStockphoto is a royalty-free image web site with a good selection of imagery and, more importantly for low-budget projects, they are incredibly cheap to purchase
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A good site for adding customisable, royalty-free music to multimedia projects is Partners in Rhyme. Also useful for voiceovers and sound effects.
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Photoshop Support does what it says on the tin!
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For every style of font, for use on a Mac, with a great search facility, check out Mac Fonts
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Once a printed magazine, x-height is where you will find interesting and useful information on and about fonts, type design, designers and technology written by industry experts.
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Magma is the best place on the web to find the most inspiring books covering all aspects of art and design.
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NB. I will soon be adding a post of inspiring websites of fellow designers and design and advertising agencies eg. Non-format, as recommended by Matt. If you know of any that you'd like to recommend for this forthcoming post, please notify me via the comments section