Raise your hand if you've ever been victimized by your own mood board.
For non-designers: imagine being pelted by an endless stream of JPEGs — the collective works of tens of thousands of people, all at once. That is how the internet feels to me. As a designer, I mostly go online for visual reference. It broadens horizons, sparks new ideas, expedites brainstorming. It's invaluable for finding that perfect image to pitch a concept. And yet, there's an ugly truth: it's a trap.
The illusion of productivity
We spend hours trawling through Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and Savee — saving, pinning, archiving images for projects that may never exist. It's part research, part compulsion, part hoarding. And we're all drawing from the same well, guided by the same algorithms that flatten and narrow our visual world.
My gripe isn't with the risk of mimicking existing styles. It's the illusion of productivity. Right-click-save, drag-drop, rearrange — this busyness can feel like creation when it isn't. It's like watching cooking shows without ever cooking, or kids watching "play videos" without actually playing. Organizing imagery can feel like a substitute for making something real. As if saving this one image will somehow transfer the skill behind it directly into my hands.
There's no substitute for making things badly
The only real alternative is to roll up your sleeves, experiment, and make something so far from your intention that it makes you question everything. That discomfort is where original work lives. You can always delete it.
But then there's Are.na
This is where my argument falls apart. Are.na is a visual archive that evokes the internet's early days: clunky interfaces, unpredictable search results, a genuine sense of discovery. It feels different — more academic, more rare, less commercial. The content spans the 80s through early 2000s, a visual chronicle of a time when technology seemed like magic and advertising peddled dreams rather than specs.
Maybe it's just nostalgia. But a platform like Are.na, with its niche collections and intellectually stimulating oddities, offers something Pinterest can't: the genuine thrill of finding something you haven't seen before. Something not yet on anyone else's boards.
On second thought, Are.na sucks. Don't bother checking it out.
