Sometimes it’s nice to take a step back, eat some good snacks from Whole Foods, and get the creative juices flowing. And, because this year was the Year of Learning, our team created OE Inspiration Lunch, where we share our favorite links, websites, designers, projects, and many other things that we find inspirational in the field of marketing and design. Whether it is innovative, creative, strategic, or completely random and funny, doing this every Wednesday lets us step back from our own work, appreciate what others have to offer, and be inspired by new ideas. Though we have shared many inspirational subjects this past year, below are a few that take the win for our top inspirations.

“Loving Vincent” Movie Trailer
“Loving Vincent is such a unique and ambitious concept—as an artist, it is easy to appreciate the incredible hard work that went into it and the passion required to bring an idea like that to life. Every artist should see this movie, it was visually stunning and a great telling of the story of Vincent van Gogh’s life.” – Andy

“The New Science of Team Chemistry” by Harvard Business Review
“Nicolette brought this interactive piece and it has stuck out in my mind ever since. We each learned more about the type of worker we are and which personalities we work best with. After realizing everyone’s personality, it became so clear why we work the way we do. It was also useful as I led my intern—I want to incorporate this process with every new hire moving forward.” – Hannah

“Parallel Chat—UI/UX Case Study of a New Chat Interaction”
“I always love looking at UX case studies because it forces you to go beyond your normal way of thinking about things. This chat interaction UX presented some really cool points that would be great improvements to something we use every day.” – Kendall

“Papyrus SNL Skit”
“I loved showing this video to the OE team because it was humorous for designers and almost informative for non-designers. It holds true that sometimes the overall design of a brand or project is left under-designed and sometimes big industries and designers take shortcuts when it comes to design thinking. It is important to remember to always put out your best work and find creative and strategic solutions to problems” – Demi

“Redesigning the Smartphone Dial-Pad”
“It’s pretty awesome that there are people who push the boundaries of designs that have been considered successful for decades, like Sajid Saiyed. Not only is this a great experiment, but it’s also a fantastic reminder to everyone that design is all around us and it’s okay to challenge it—and we should.” – Nicolette

“Do Good With Data”
“Periscopic’s work inspires me because their solutions do an exceptional job of presenting data in both a creative and functional format. At the same time, their work is clearly refined to present only the information that is important. It seems they take great strides to think through and apply an experience that is both engaging and leads to an understood outcome. It is difficult to design information graphics that both inspire and clearly portray a data set. They are masters at it.” –Aaron