It's common for artists, such as graphic designers, to keep scrapbooks of
designs that catch their eye. This could be a logo, typeface, color scheme,
page layout, or whatever else they deem of high quality. They use these
scrapbooks (which traditionally were books with scraps of paper in them) to
get inspiration, to help them develop their own style (by identifying likes
and dislikes), or simply to browse.
Why does this matter to you, a developer?
That's a good question, and at first when I started to keep a scrapbook, I did
it mainly for visual designs like web-pages. But once I started I realized
it would work really well for diagrams, code, clever UI elements, or really any
content that I think is exceptional.
If I'm working on a task, and feel bogged down and un-creative, I'll browse my
scrapbook, getting inspiration. I look for little things that make the scraps great.
I ask myself, why is this particularly good? This works just as well for a sort
routine in code, as it does for logo design.
The main benefits of keeping a scrapbook are:
creating the habit of looking for, and identifying, content that you like, and
browsing the scrapbook at a later time to get your creative juices flowing
Previous Topic
