Design inspiration is everywhere you look. But the muse is fickle, memory is fallible, and ideas are fleeting. In this post, the first in a new series I’ll be writing about where to find design inspiration, I’ll suggest some tools to help you seduce your muse and capture your inspiration so you can make the most of it.

Speaking of inspiration, I was first motivated to take a more disciplined approach to the topic after reading Andy Clarke’s excellent book, Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design. In his chapter on inspiration, he recommends creating mood boards to gather images and other design fragments that represent the mood you’re trying to create in your design. He also recommends keeping a design scrapbook to capture sources of inspiration.

Digital Camera

It’s a good habit to carry a camera with you everywhere you go, to capture design details. I’ll write more about what to look for later, but in the meantime, get a decent digital camera. Even an inexpensive camera will do for capturing ideas. I use a Canon PowerShot SD400, but if you have a little more room in your pocket, purse, or backpack, have a look at the Canon PowerShot TX-1. It sports a 10x optical zoom and captures HD video. It’s definitely on my wishlist.

The Canon PowerShot SD400

The Canon PowerShot TX-1

PhotoStickies

Cork boards plastered with magazine and newspaper clippings are fine, especially if you’re designing for print. But if you’re designing something to be viewed on a computer, a digital mood board will do a better job of helping you visualize.

PhotoStickies, from DEVONtechnologies ($12), lets you display images on your desktop as floating, borderless stickies. After importing, saving or scanning images to a mood board folder, fire up PhotoStickies. Then resize the images, drag them around, rotate them, apply effects and save your arrangement.

iPhoto

According to Clarke, Jon Hicks uses iPhoto to store scans of his ideas, sketches, type styles and colors, along with his photographs. I use iPhoto to archive my photos, often capturing architectural details, signs, and compositional experiments.

iPhoto Books

I’ve printed a number of iPhoto books. If you want to move your design scrapbook off the computer and onto the page, iPhoto books are a good option. MyPublisher and Blurb are two other sources to consider.

Red Snapper

I find most of my inspiration online, filling my Bookmarks menu with sites and stuffing a folder on my desktop with .webloc files, thinking that way I’m more likely to get back to them. The problem with both methods is that I can’t preview all of these sites at a glance. I stumbled on Red Snapper ($8) at Glenn Wolsey’s blog. In combination with Yep (below), it’s the perfect digital scrapbook solution.

Red Snapper is a Safari plugin that captures PDF files of web pages as they’re displayed onscreen—the full window—complete with links. Just create a design scrapbook folder and hit Command-R as you surf, saving the captured pages to your scrapbook.

Yep

Now that your design scrapbook folder is filling up with documents, launch Yep ($34), the PDF organizer. You can tell Yep to track your design folder and it will automatically catalog newly added documents. Yep lets you preview thumbnails of all your documents, view PDFs inside Yep, and tag documents to make them easier to find. And since you captured your web pages with Red Snapper, you can still click on links in pages you’ve saved to Yep.

I save all of my design related documents to Yep and, instead of scanning papers to iPhoto, I scan them directly from within Yep.

Midnight Inbox

Design inspiration isn’t only about images. When I get a hint of an idea, a flash of insight, an inkling to try something, or just think of something I need to do to tweak one of my projects, I turn to Midnight Inbox ($35). Based on GTD principles, Midnight Inbox helps me keep my inspiration organized. I have a folder on my desktop where I stuff files that don’t belong in Yep. Midnight Inbox collects these items automatically and prompts me to process them. It’s also great for capturing quick notes or actions and managing design projects.

Journler

For capturing lengthier notes and ideas, I use Journler. No Mac user should be without this outstanding free software. It offers audio, video and image capture, integrates with iLife, and exports to your iPod (and I’ve only mentioned a few of its many talents). You can even use Journler to post entries to your blog.

Moleskine Notebooks

Even I don’t sit in front of the computer all the time. For those times when I’m on the move, I often take along a trusty Moleskine Notebook. When I travel, there’s one in my briefcase or backpack. When I’m home, I keep a Moleskine on my night stand, along with a light up pen. If the muse strikes in the middle of the night, I can make notes in my Moleskine without waking my wife.

I prefer the Moleskine Small Squared Notebook , which lends itself to both note taking and sketching, or the Moleskine Large Plain Notebook.

Windows Users?

Since I’m a Mac user, I’ve only mentioned Mac applications in this post. If you’re a Windows user, I’d appreciate any Windows recommendations that might be helpful to other readers.