Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

These super inter­est­ing images are the work of Craig Crutchfield, a designer at McGarrah Jesse. To put the work in con­text, here’ some back­ground infor­ma­tion, straight from the artist himself:

These images are made up from the part of the Polaroid film that peo­ple usu­ally throw away. This is an inter­est­ing thing to me, because these images are filled with old, cool, decay­ing icons from places that have been (for the most part) thrown away. Not all of these images are from defunct busi­ness or places. A lot of them are still in use. But they all have a rar­ity and shelf life that seems to be end­ing. That is why I shoot this type of sig­nage. It will all be torn down and turned into a big box retail store soon. I hate that.

I think these objects are so beau­ti­ful. Nearly no one makes or pur­chases signs like these any­more for their busi­nesses. I want to remem­ber them and cel­e­brate them.

What an amaz­ing project. Each piece is incred­i­bly lay­ered and tex­tural on its own, and the entire set — which you can see on Flickr—is really beau­ti­ful as a whole.