Many showcase the impactful image-central grid system of Romek Marber. Even today, they still look good.

While Penguin books still live up to their original promise of affordable literature, the entrance of computers has sadly muddled the their design. Most new covers just suck, suffering from overdesign, art direction by committee, and unfortunate typography. It’s quite sad:

Yes, some hope comes with Penguin’s latest Great Ideas series, but I doubt the refreshingly considered design of this series will spread to their entire library. It’s a shame.

You can find more inspiration and a chronicle of Penguin covers in Phil Baine’s book, Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935—2005.

In the craze to become ever more productive, we may avoid looking at pretty pictures like these. They seem superficial, ephemeral, and more nostalgic than useful. We have more important things to do, we’d say. But let’s not forget the goal of becoming more productive: to make time for joy in our lives. Often, the right kind of pictures inspire us to think about actions, helping us to imagine desired states that are different from our existing ones.

So the next time you practice the (10+2)*5 procrastination hack, take a few moments during your play time to enjoy Flickr. If you really need your productivity fix, here are some useful things you can do in Flickr aside from using it as a source of inspiration:

• Free photos for projects
  Many people on Flickr release their photos with a Creative Commons license, allowing you to use their images for non-commercial purposes or if you attribute the original artist. Now, you have a source of photos that don’t look like lame stock photos. Check out Flickr’s Creative Commons library.

• Create your own stock photo library with friends
  Get your classmates or colleagues together and agree to share photos to create a common stock photo library.

• Get feedback on your work
  Besides photos, you can also post images of your personal projects to get feedback from your immediate contacts or the whole Flickr community.

• See what tools and settings others used
  Next to many photos on Flickr is a little link that says “More properties”. Here you’ll find a slew of information about the photo including the camera and settings such as exposure, aperture, focal length, ISO speed that the photographer used. This is great for budding photographers to learn what certain settings look like.

• Find a new haircut
  When I was looking for a cool new haircut, I turned to Flickr to find pictures of mohawks and mullets.

• New ideas for GTD
  Flickr is filled with photos of people chronicling their implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. It’s quite fascinating to look at all the variations and hacks that people are coming up with. Check it out!

What’s your inspiration and how else do you use Flickr? Post a comment and tell us!