As long as I can remember, I’ve been finding things and holding on to them. Sometimes it's an emotional attachment, sometimes aesthetic value, other times I just haven't convinced myself it's useless yet.

One of my first collections was baseball cards. I remember having Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie card and that being a huge deal. I would bike up to the comics & cards store and drool over the packs of cards. Unfortunately most of those cards were burned in a house fire when I was eleven. My collection was lost and I was devastated. One thing I took away from that experience was the kindness of the kids in my elementary school. So many cards were donated from other kids that I ended up with a much better collection that I had in the first place. Someone even lent me their stamp collection to hold to until I got my card operation up and running again.

The collections continued as I grew older and got my own place. Garage sales and garbage day were my best friends. At one point I lived in an apartment with 11 couches.

Not much has changed. Though now I collect different things. Sure, I still take a look through the stacks of records that the neighbor is throwing out, but mostly what I collect are ideas.

I’m constantly moving , getting ready for my third move this year, so I’ve substantially cut down on my collections, to the point where given a few days notice, I can be up and out. There are two factors here. One of them is the issue of bedbugs in New York City. The fear was instilled in me when I first moved here, that if I picked any furniture off the street then I would be cursed with bedbugs and would need to essentially burn my apartment to be rid of them. The second being that I began collecting other types of things. Ideas have become my greatest collection.

As a designer I am influenced by my environment, whether it's a commercial on TV or signage outside of a bodega, I attempt to capture those for later reference. It can be a type treatment or the way a color was utilized, I want to be able to capture that and come back to it later for inspiration. I have a few different tools for doing so.

• Sketchbooks (for when all I need is a quick visual reference)
• Notebooks (when a quick note is required)
• Field Notes (constantly in my back pocket and perfect for a sketch or notes at an odd place or time)
• iPhone (to quickly share what I've found)
• Canon PowerShot SD1000 (a quickdraw camera that easily fits in my pocket)
• Nikon D40 (when I know I'm heading out for an adventure)

Where do you find inspiration? I find that it's everywhere I turn. When I walk down the street, watch a movie, read a book, buy art, create art, talk with strangers, close my eyes... You get the idea. I like being impacted by every experience that I have. I want to be able to capture a little something from every experience I have.  

When I was in the graphic design department at Tri-C I had an instructor who encouraged us to keep inspiration notebooks. At the time I thought it was just an obnoxious assignment, but I recently found my old inspiration notebook and was very entertained looking through it. Type has always been something that I’ve been interested in and it’s great to look through and see how while some of my tastes have changed I still am attracted to some of the same aesthetics. As a web designer, it's rare that I find inspiration in or am moved by other websites. If I look at too many, I find that my sites just end up looking way too similar to other peoples.

I really like that I can step away from my computer and sit on the couch and browse through my books. But I am still reminded of the kindness of the kids at that school, sharing their collections with me and I’d like to pass that along. I know there are a few people and organizations that do a great job of documenting their inspiration already:

• Veerle Peters
• Paul Boag
• Flickr Design
• Today's Inspiration

Now I've started my own: 

• Get Something From Everything Flick Group

I’m still organizing my collections, and they are coming from a few different mediums so it may take a while to get up to speed, but I plan on growing the Flickr group and continuing to share. Please add your inspiration libraries to the group to share as well!

Has there been an unlikely situation that you walked away inspired from? What are your favorite ways to capture things that move you? I invite you to share in the comments below!