Collecting Eye Candy for Inspiration—and Fun
Eye Candy. It was the way I described San Francisco, the first time I was there. Later, it was my vision of Austin, the first time I visited, and ever after since living here.
Food makes for great eye candy—food that’s worthy of photographing. Since presentation is everything, almost all food photography provokes the salivation response when the food is well presented. (The salivation response is an essential component of Eye Candy.)
Eye Candy is everywhere, though. It’s especially evident when shopping online, at an Apple Store, in a finely-tuned art gallery called Abacus in Freeport, Maine. It’s free for the perusing on design-oriented sites like Beautiful Decay, Sight Unseen, Design Milk.
I collect it, like memories, like digital photos, like sea glass on an island shore, and it’s harmless and thrilling and inspiring all at once. It’s what flows the creative juices. It’s what makes me want to be an artist, a photographer, a painter, a designer, any creative spirit I can imagine myself becoming.
Here’s a bit of Eye Candy (that’s more than deserving of initial caps) that I’ve collected recently, but by no means exhaustively:
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Blue Eye Candy: Adam Silverman’s pots, featured in Sight Unseen
- Petal Power: Eye candy made with flower petals into stunning fashion by Grace Ciou, as seen in the Huffington Post
- Pixel Eye Candy: Cameras to salivate over, where form may even triumph function, gathered in Design Milk
- Architectural Eye Candy: The Container Bar, an Austin, Texas bar built from shipping containers, featured in Design Milk
- Reef Candy: Ocean reef-inspired layered wood sculptures called See Life, by artist Joshua Abarbanel, in Design Milk
- Typographic Eye Candy: Anything drawn by Dude Be Awesome on his tumblr blog
- Font Candy: Sougwen Chung’s Chinese-inspired interactive animated font, Kinecdysis, shown from A-Z on Beautiful Decay
- Cycling Candy: Mango Bikes that make you want to ride . . . or just design some more colorful bikes
- Sky Candy: Long-exposure photography by Evgeniy Zaytsev, shown in a stunning array at Lost at E Minor
Here’s where I display the Eye Candy I create: Pairings
What are your favorite go-to spots for stoking up your Eye Candy engine?
