Here is your freshly squeezed design inspiration for the week of June 18 2023.
- SOMETHING GORGEOUS: The Drop Store by OWOW
- PORTFOLIO OF THE WEEK: Vikki Breusova
- Mill by Manual
- NFType
- Ostro by Mucho
- ONE TOK: Noodle and Buns
- ONE LEARNING: Reset & Reorganize Life
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Resource of the Week
Framer
I have been messing around with Framer a lot lately as I prepare to release my first portfolio website design (coming soon!) and Framer just announced the release of their Ai assistant. When you open Framer you'll see their new Ai assistant feature and all you have to do it type in what kind of website you want to build a BOOM! The Ai assistant will give you a full designed page that you can customize with different type choices and color palettes.
Why is this awesome? It shortens the website creation time drastically give you more opportunity to focus on the important pieces like content and visuals.
Framer is free to use with a Framer URL but if you want to use a custom URL that's easy too! All you have to do is sign up for a paid account here.
I can't stress enough how much I love Framer and believe that it will be one of the most popular tools to build websites moving forward. So do yourself a favor and start messing around with Framer ASAP!
Something Gorgeous
The Drop Store by OWOW
A waterless world sounds quite dystopian doesn't it? 5 billion people, or over half of humanity will struggle to get the water they need to survive at least one month of the year by 2050. OWOW partnered creative agency Neverland, to create The Drop Store calling attention to ever growing problem with a list of dystopian like products such as an $890 bag of chocolate squares or $99 bag of cola.
While the products may not be available for actual purchase, the design and development that went into this project is gorgeous and I think it does a great job educating visitors on how they can actually contribute.
My favorite has to be the $239 'Betterbread'.
Check out more from OWOW and Neverland.
Portfolio Of The Week
Vikki Breusova
Vikki is a product designer with over 7 years of experience located who knows where. Her portfolio website is stunning, filled with exquisite scroll interactions and beautiful use of negative space. Vikki's portfolio website design showcases how you can use your portfolio website to tell an engaging and interactive story all while showcasing your personality and design perspective.
I also love her use of repetition in her header and about section to increase visual interest. Let's not also forget to mention my absolute love for 'Helvetica' like typography selection. Her hero typeface is Suisse Int'l by Swiss Typefaces and her secondary typeface is Tobias by Displaay.
Portfolio Rating: 8.4/10
Vikki's design portfolio website is built using Webflow.
View Vikki Breusova's portfolio here.
Creative Finds
Mill by Manual
"If you can eat it, so can the bin". The design and branding partner, Manual, has put together an awesome identity for the food waste company, Mill.
NFType
I'm still struggling a little to understand this concept because at first I thought this was focused on ownership and verification when it comes to licensing typefaces but this goes even deeper allowing customers to purchase unique typefaces. You can learn more about the project clicking the image above but this interview by Creative Boom with the founder, Craig Ward helps to better understand the idea and purpose behind the project.
Ostro by Mucho
The more I look at this identity for Ostro, the more I love it and careless about what the company actually does 😅
Also shoutout to A Hundred Monkeys who renamed the company from 'rxdefine'. Yuck 🥴
ONE TOK
Noodle and Buns
I can't help but stop when I see cool animated 3D renders like this from Noodle and Bun. I find it even more interesting that Noodle and Bun sell plushies of these animated renders and have a massive following on Instagram. It's cool to see moments like this where creativity wins out versus the traditional way of marketing and 'selling' a product.
One Thing I Learned
Reset & Reorganize Life
First I want to thank everyone for sending your kind replies while I was feeling a bit under the weather! Also, I got so much interest about sharing a portfolio round up at the end of each month in addition to Creative Juice and I will be working on putting that together this week. The first edition of what I'm calling 'Portfolio Squeeze' will be at the end of June so stay tuned!
After having a week of feeling pretty bad and not being able to get into any kind of flow when it came to work. I took the opportunity to reorganize some of my personal processes and how I manage tasks outside of client work. I have been reading about the PARA method from Tiago Forte and found it to be very helpful and not too overly complicated when it came to finding a system that worked for me. Previously I have used a mix mash of tools like Notion, Pinterest, Cosmos, and others but I finally decided to pull everything into Notion and so far I love it.
Additionally, while I love traveling and am currently writing this email from Thailand. I've acknowledged that moving around every other month is becoming very taxing. So I have decided to enroll in a year visa program in Bali, Indonesia where I will be able to set up a little base and give myself more time to work on some of the projects I have in mind.
Sometimes it can be hard to get into a groove when it comes to work and right now I find myself needing that the most. What have been some things that you have done personally to create the best work environment for yourself?
PS. Share your recommendations with me by replying to this email. I read and reply to every single one!
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