Inspired By #104
👋🏻 Hello!
This is Issue #104 of Inspired By, a monthly(-ish) newsletter from your favorite designer’s favorite designer Jan-Paul Koudstaal. 🤠
Hre are some things that have inspired me over the past few weeks:
👁️ Invisible Creature has a new website!
Invisible Creature brings bold ideas to life through design, illustration, and storytelling. Whether it’s an iconic album cover, a thought-provoking campaign, or a toy that lives quietly on your shelf, their work is made to endure and inspire.
So much amazing work, like the largest bas relief mural in the world, their visuals for La Marzocco, and a mural for LEGO®.
And don’t forget their shop, so much cool stuff (too bad shipping to EU is €32.95)
And I love how they decorate their offices with vintage toys — makes me think I should add way more stuff to my collection.
💡 Disney Pixar Luxo Jr.
One thing I will definitely add to my collection is this new Luxo Jr. lamp from LEGO Ideas (pre-ordered this set so fast…). I hope LEGO make a big version the Pizza Planet Truck next. 🤞🏻
🙌🏻 SuprOrdinary
SuprOrdinary follows the inspiring journey of designer Devin Mathews as he actively seeks to inject more creativity into his daily life.
The first episode’s sandwich shop rebrand is visually compelling (giving off Wes Anderson vibes), and has great editting and storytelling. However, I don’t think the branding he creates truly reflects a small, local business. 🫣
In the second episode Devin and his brother go backpacking in the mountains for four days and attempted to make something that would rock your socks off. 😅
Looking forward to the next one!
📚 Classic Stephen King
I’ve been reading Stephen King books lately, starting with 11/22/63, Later, just finished The Green Mile, and now I’m reading his latest You Like It Darker.
I want to read his classics next and I discovered these vintage covers from Scribner that look so awesome. Too bad they don’t have The Shining.
😍 The Ohno Book: A Serious Guide to Irreverent Type Design
From one of my favorite type foundries OH no Type Co. comes this richly illustrated and endlessly entertaining handbook featuring type specimens, process sketches, and instructions for creating typefaces.
Released on October 14th — Pre-order here.
🎬 The Studio
Seth Rogen stars in this satirical cringe comedy about a newly appointed studio head desperate for celebrity approval.
The series is a huge homage to cinema, it’s great for film geeks like me.
Seth shares a couple of behind-the-scenes on his instagram too, very cool to see how they created those elaborate scenes.
🧘🏿♂️ The blissful zen of a good side project
This article by Josh really resonated with me. He writes about how he was maybe depressed, or burned out and let his consumption-to-creation ratio run wildly out of balance.
He got out of it by working on his side project with the freedom to explore possibilities and happily follow any compelling whim. (via Sidebar)
The blissful zen of a good side project - Josh Collinsworth blog
One of life's greatest simple pleasures is creating something just for yourself.
😍 52 weeks of obsessions
Talking about side projects: each week this year Thomas Moes explores a topic he obsessed with and he designs a custom page for it.
“It should feel like a visual bonbon, a lovely little surprise every week, as a small antidote to the algorithmic curation.”
Love this concept and I’m learning a lot on topics I know little about, like soviet watches, Enzo Mari or Fellini’s sketches.
About 52 Weeks of Obsessions
This is my tiny corner of the internet to reclaim creativity & curiosity. New one every week.
🍕 Pizza Dough Calculator
And talking about side projects again: I’ve created a Pizza Dough Calculator app:
Well, “created” is a big word, I’ve spent a few hours designing just these three screens, but I’m already thinking about adding more features, including fun transitions and animations.
And now that Figma released Figma Make, maybe even start “vibe coding” it… 😏
(I could also try to build it with 0dev, Lovable, Bolt, Cursor… OR I’ll just move on to another project)
Let me hear your thoughts:reply here or on Threads.