If It’s That Hard, You’re Doing It Wrong
You’re doing it wrong Liam. First don’t surf to the sites you mentioned. Instead download the Panda extension: Use Panda for Chrome / Firefox / Safari* and pick your desired layout.
Every time you open a new browser tab, you’ll be treated to a cross-section of articles, screenshots, GIFs and photos of the best design content across a growing list of news and inspiration sites. News of interest to all designers, not just those who create digital product. The sources run the gamut from furniture design to mobile app design.
Ingest the and tag the visuals you want to keep and send them to gimmebar or pinterest, send the articles you want to read later to Evernote, Instapaper, Pocket, Readability etc. Do it all from the browser. Be ruthless, skim judiciously and harvest only the best of the best, of the articles that really interest you. (It’s easy to spot and avoid the content that fall into the categories you mentioned/hate) Don’t use any of these services? Then download the One-Tab extension and save all of your newly found links to a single tab in chrome. Name them, group them, lock them down and share as needed with your friends.
You’ll find in a couple days you’ll have more good content than you can consume. Too lazy to do it yourself? Then subscribe to the best newsletters out there, subscribe to SideBar, ProductHunt, Austin Kleon, the Hacker Newsletter and even David Pell’s Next Draft — since not all inspiration has to be visual or directly related to design. (There are tons of good newsletters out there.)
You have to be an arbiter of your own taste(s). The trick is not to complain that everything tastes like sh*t, the trick is to seek out the sources that feed your creative hunger.
Too lazy to do ANY of the things I mentioned above? Then subscribe to my All Things Design trove and I’ll do it for you. Just don’t expect daily updates — sometimes I get inspired and I’m working on something that keeps me from picking articles. http://bit.ly/rum_AllThingsDesign_trove
*I hear that the Safari extension is coming.
