Don’t get me wrong, I love design inspiration websites. In fact, I have a whole bookmark folder chock-full of them (favorites being designbombs, dezinspiration, ilovetypography’s ‘Week in Type’ series). These gems aside, many design inspiration sites seem to be steadily veering away from a presenting a collection of hand-picked favorites and more towards becoming indiscriminate mass-aggregators riddled with generic templates and tired web 2.0 tricks. So, here’s what I’ve been looking at instead:

ffffound – “A web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!” Beautiful details, international designs, new perspectives; like leafing through someone else’s sketchbook slash secret box of treasures.

etsy – “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade.” Great cross-media inspiration. Offbeat, hand-crafted, lovely. Sort by color, texture, or etsy-recommended. Hand-painted yarn can offer some great color palette inspiration.

flickr – “Almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.” Searches for “haute couture” “poster design” are favorites for unexpected finds. A helpful and effective taste-network: browse everything by a particular user or artist, check out his or her favorites, explore flickr pools that he or she belongs to.

amazon – Frequently updated collection of book covers via bestsellers and new releases list; right-click-save The Girl Who Played with Fire, Dry, The Portable Atheist, the Oral Biography of Buster Casey, Fahrenheit 451...