A Weekly Dose of Inspiration - Highlights from 5 Months of Curated Creativity
Back in April, our Co-Founder and Creative Director, Jan Erlinghagen, launched a weekly series of sharing his inspirations with the team. Every Friday, he curates a collection of things that sparked his creativity throughout the week. While many of his picks lean toward design, they span a wide range—think company rebrands, standout websites, typefaces, campaigns, illustrations, articles, helpful tools and sometimes even a podcast or two. Each edition features a fun cover to mark its place in the series.
MY TOP 10
Since starting the series, Jan has shared over 80 sources of inspiration. Here are 10 of my personal favorites — no particular order, just the ones that really stuck with me.
1. The series introduced me to Switch-Lit, a collaborative storytelling platform that lets you team up with friends to create stories one chapter at a time. The website is pretty well-designed, letting you create custom covers for your stories and offering monthly prompts to get your creativity flowing.
2. I learned about a cool Google trick: if you search for certain browser-native typefaces, you’ll see the results displayed in those very fonts. He was searching for Playfair Display and initially thought Google was putting him through an A/B test with some funky typography. This neat little feature also works with other classics like Impact, Calibri, Garamond, and, of course, Comic Sans.
3. The very first edition of ‹Weekly Inspirations› introduced me to a playbook from Dove aimed at encouraging more realistic portrayals of women in AI-generated images. It was great to see Dove staying true to their commitment against unrealistic beauty standards—a stance they took over two decades ago. With the forecast that a whopping 90% of content will be AI-generated by 2025, their message hit home harder than ever: let’s keep beauty real! You can check out the playbook via this link.
4. Headspace refreshed their brand identity, complete with revamped illustrations, animations, and a custom typeface. It's impressive how they’ve maintained their playful vibe over the years while still fitting into the tech landscape. If you’re curious about the rebrand and the creative minds behind it, check it out at It’s Nice That.
5. The series put Scrib3 studio on my radar. Their brutalistic and spacey design, paired with a striking typeface and color palette, creates a unique vibe. Plus, the cool animations make browsing their website feel like stepping into a video game.
6. Jan unveiled his vision for a CRU Office in an ideal world: Atelier Gardens is a developing campus in Berlin, aimed at supporting impact organizations, film companies, and artists alike. At its center is MVRDV’s HAUS 1, which stands out with its vibrant yellow facade and eye-catching 57-meter-long outdoor staircase. If we ever build our own office, I bet it would look something like this.
7. Jan took a trip down memory lane, recalling how comics made his heart race as a kid. He would spend hours tucked away in a makeshift cave, flashlight in hand, diving into the colorful worlds of his favorite heroes. Today, that passion remains as strong as ever, and he can’t wait to pre-order the facsimile edition of the DC Comics Style Guide © & ™ DC, once it comes out in the EU. Originally released in 1982—the same year Jan himself was «released»—this book features 187 stunning reproductions of art by José Luis García-López and includes an intro by former DC Comics president Paul Levitz.
8. The series featured a fantastic read—a short manifesto by Natasha Khan on «How to birth art», brought to life with stunning illustrations by Julia Sobolev. It’s part of WeTransfer’s «Manifesto» series, where activists and creatives share their top 10 rules for living. Check it out here.
9. F**k AI—Learn to write manifestos yourself! Manifesto Writing is a go-to resource for anyone curious about crafting, studying, or simply enjoying brand manifestos. Created by Lonnie Elliott, who spent over 12 years as a writer inside the creative studios at Apple and Meta, the website aims to become the largest library of manifesto insights and inspiration—always completely free! You’ll find a sweet collection of brand manifestos along with a knowledge center that teaches you everything you need to know about writing your own.
10. And lastly, something fun: Today’s logos reimagined as surrealist paintings.
THE JOY IT BROUGHT TO OUR TEAM
Jan has been running the ‹Weekly Inspirations› series for about five months now, and it’s been amazing to see the positive impact it has had on our team.
First things first—obviously this series has inspired us. With many of Jan’s shares focused on branding, he keeps us in the loop about industry trends while also giving us a burst of fresh ideas that get our creative juices flowing. There’s something uplifting about seeing great work, and Jan’s contagious enthusiasm has definitely inspired us all—it’s not just the content he shares, but also the passion he has for our field that fuels our own inspiration. It really helped us bond as a team since it gave us plenty to talk about each week.
Ever since Jan started this series, our «for-sharing» channel on Slack has become more active. Other team members followed in his footsteps and started sharing more of their own inspirations, ideas and just things they’ve been enjoying lately.
It turned into something everyone looked forward to. Jan typically drops the latest edition on Fridays, which makes for a perfect way to end the work week by reading up on some uplifting content. There was a week in May when he missed a post, and a bunch of people were quick to complain that they were missing their weekly dose of inspiration.
The ‹Weekly Inspiration› series has turned into a key part of our creative groove. Every Friday, we get a burst of new ideas that encourages us to think outside the box and fuels some great conversations. The excitement builds all week as we await fresh motivation to kick off the weekend. I can safely say that everyone on the team is already looking forward to what this week’s edition will bring!
