Moodboards and references

Member lesson

Finding references that are not the obvious ones

Lesson 3 of 10 in Moodboards and references.

Lesson

If your references come from the same three sites as everyone else's, your work will look like everyone else's, and no amount of execution rescues that. The feeds are optimised for engagement, which means they are optimised for the familiar.

An ink drawing of a designer at a library table surrounded by open old books, a crystal photograph and a catalogue page, with her phone face down at the edge.
Hunting for references in old books with the phone feed put away.
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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Everybody being shown the same images, so everybody's boards converge.”

    • Algorithmic sameness
    • Dead reference
    • Decomposition
    • Transferable
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Somewhere nobody in your category is looking. Where the good references are.”

    • Adjacent field
    • Tag
    • Reading
    • The actual reason
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Material old enough that the algorithm has forgotten it.”

    • Archive
    • Style reference
    • Reference rights
    • Project board

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