In the spirit of Valentines Day, we offered up weekly lists of our favorite things supplied by some of your favorite RBDers. This week’s post is from our Senior Designer Kristine Wise. Kristine shares a few of the things that make her days productive and enjoyable.

iStock Photo
It’s a fantastic resource for photography and illustration and it’s also a great place to find inspiration. Sometimes I’ll do a search using a word like future or yellow and see what comes up. The different ways people express the same concept gets me thinking in new directions and, as a designer, all that visual stimulation starts my creative juices flowing. There’s also the Design Spotlight that features work using art from the site and the Steel Cage, where members pit their Photoshop skills against one another in five rounds of art and mayhem using (you guessed it) iStock images.

My Tea Kettle
It’s a sturdy old pot that has stood the test of time — over ten years on the stove. I know a microwave would do the trick, but there’s nothing quite like the boil and whistle of a kettle. You can hear the this one from down the street. Aside from the computer, I think I use it more than any other item in my house. I enjoy a good cup of tea, but most of the time just drink cups of hot water. It’s so nice to hold a warm mug in your hands on these chilly winter days.

A Pencil and Paper
Whether at the start of a project, when I hit a sticking point along the way or on those wonderful occasions when the ideas are coming faster than they can be completed, I find myself going to the old drawing board. For me  that means grabbing a handful of paper from the recycling bin and scribbling concepts on the backs of old printouts until something takes shape. I always have a stack of dog-eared leafs tucked under the keyboard in front of me. It might look like a pile of random doodles and notes, but really it’s a journal of all the thoughts, fonts, colors and images that went into a design, as well as a few tea cup rings.