Here's a fun new way to explore and pick out colors. The Magic Color Picker converts your text descriptions into precise color codes. For example, here is the color generated for “sunny day but overcast”. — CD

I’ve been learning a lot about visual thinking from Terri Lonier and her free newsletter, SOLO—designed to help solo entrepreneurs stand out. Terri holds a PhD in Business and Brand History and has extensive experience as a strategic advisor, and because of this, every issue feels like a master class in visual frameworks, storytelling, typography, and more. In her most recent issue, she shared her "7 Heroes of Visual Communication," which directed me toward many new and fascinating resources. Check out her archive and subscribe here. — CD

If you’re like me and would like to know more about fonts than just serif and san-serif, here is a cool guide to check out: The Logo Company’s Guide to Typography and Fonts. It breaks down the entire anatomy of fonts. — CD 

I found this post on color palettes very inspiring. Illustrator Charlotte Durance shares the various ways in which she finds palettes and creates her own and how she uses them. When she's out, she takes photos and saves them in a color folder on her phone. She’s found palettes in bookshops, supermarkets, and even restaurant bathrooms. It makes me want to be more observant of design and color throughout my day. — CD 

I love this idea of defining my own visual style. This how-to article outlines how to discover your visual foundation so that you can make timeless and meaningful design decisions. The five steps are:

1. Get personal: Connect to a favorite place or story to find inspiration for your visual style.

2. Get curious: Create a visual research board to collect images, icons, and typography that resonate with your theme.

3. Embrace frequency bias: Look for patterns and recurring elements to solidify your visual direction.

4. Check yourself: Confirm your theme is personal and relevant to you. 

5. Create a definitive visual taste palette: Compile an edge-to-edge board filled with visuals, type, color, and shapes that expresses your unique visual style.

— CD 

Wowee Zowee! The Internet Archive Design is an amazing library of inspiring graphic design documents. It bills itself as “a digital archive of graphic design related items” which includes old font catalogs, logo handbooks, cool brochures, design yearbooks, visual display, handbooks for design machines, and graphic style guides. I’ve found amazing treasures here, which I use to hatch my daily art. All are free to peruse, but you need to register a free account in order to “check out” some in-print publications from this online library. — KK

Deceptive.design is a pattern library of deceptive design examples used on websites and app to trick you into buying or signing up for things. There is a Hall of Shame with about 400 examples from the most complained about companies. The whole purpose of which is to raise awareness. Here's an infographic of 12 different types of dark patterns sourced from the website. — CD

When I need to know the name of a font (say so I can seek it out and use it myself), I snap a screen shot of it and place it in this free website, WhatTheFont, which usually identifies it. — KK

The Archivve is a collection of Jack Butcher‘s Visualize Value content that you can filter and search. Ideas and concepts need to anchor themselves within me visually to become absorbed. Images help to pivot the way I think. And these minimalistic, yet striking visuals are fun and enlightening and wise. — CD

Old Book Illustrations is a collection of French Romanticism and Victorian era illustrations searchable by subject, artist or title. All of the illustrations are in the public domain and free to use. Most of the images have captions or descriptions and internet archive links to the entire book. I discovered this site through Jane Friedman’s newsletter Electric Speed which always has interesting links and resources for writers. —CD

If ever there is a time that you need to identify or find a symbol, shape or character, this Shapecatcher tool will help you do that. Just sketch it into the drawbox using your mouse and click “Recognize” to get a list of possibilities that you can copy and paste, along with their names and unicode codes. — CD

On this modest website, Arquitectura Libre, one photographer documents the outlandish homes that uninhibited new wealth enables in developing countries. So far he has cataloged creative buildings in only a few countries, but I’ve seen these all around the world, particularly China, so I hope he keeps going. Normal homes are so boring! — KK

I love book cover design so it was a treat to discover Ivan Checkov’s Flicker gallery of book covers from the 1900s to the 1960s. Two of my favorites are the cover for The Monster Men (1913) by Edgar Rice Burroughs, illustrated by J. Allen St. John, and the cover for A Silver Spade (1950) by Louisa Revell, illustrated by Denis McLoughlin. (This review of A Silver Spade makes me want to read it). — MF

Mohamed Samir is a senior product designer at Apple. In his spare time, he creates stunning geometric graphics using Arabic typography. Printmag assembled a selection of his posters, which are also on display on his Instagram account. — MF

I used to buy books for visual references, but nowadays websites can serve up fabulous collections of visual materials. So instead of buying a big coffee table book of old movie posters I go to the Harry Ransom Center Movie Poster Collection. Housed at the University of Texas at Austin it displays 10,000 movie posters from the 50s, 60s, and 70s in America for free. Many amazing designs. — KK

This easy-to-use doodad.dev pattern generator has a distinct 1980s graphic design vibe. Use it in your designs or just play around with it to see what cool patterns you can make. It would be fun to use this to make book covers or fabric pattern designs. — MF

This $9 artist glove is designed to be worn on either hand and prevents smudging while drawing on your tablet (I use an iPad). It comes in one stretchy size. I have a small hand and it’s a little loose, but it never slips off and it saves me the frustration of accidentally smudging or clicking something. — CD

The coolest thing I’ve seen in many years is Same Energy. This is a beta-version of a visual search machine. You give it an image and it returns more images that feel exactly like the one you started with. Some images may be the same subject, some may be the same lighting and coloring, or some have the same visual style. It works uncannily well. I can start with a piece of furniture, or a fabric design, or an album cover, or an Instagram travel photo, and I’ll get an endless mosaic of images with the same energy. Like Pinterest, I can select one of the offerings and then get more images similar to that one, and so on. Unlike Pinterest, I can also create a collection of images and use that to train an AI to find images that share qualities of the whole set. I find I could spend hours watching the endless results recreationally, like staring into ocean waves or a campfire. It’s also a brilliant design research tool, a stunning creative prompt, and a total inspiration. — KK

I find a deep beauty in stylized diagrams required for patents. The clarity of the designs is a magical misdirection because the patent’s function is usually mysterious. Each week, the illustrations accompanying the patents filed the previous week at the US Patent office are featured in the blog Impeccable IP. It’s pure design eye candy. Enjoy! — KK

I have a soft spot for curiosities — unusual artifacts, either born or made. In fact, I have a whole wall of them in my studio. I recently added some weird mathematical shapes that could only exist because either they were grown biologically, or 3D printed. These lightweight nylon 3D artifacts are created by mathematician Henry Segerman, and sold in his Shapeways Shop. They are stunning, with bold, simple complexity, like the shells of creatures from alien planets. For art, they are reasonably priced. — KK