You’ve heard of writer’s block and you have probably experienced some type of creativity blockage in your lifetime. It happens to us all at some point, regardless of what field you are in. I often find myself searching the web for ideas. I want to find something that will inspire or trigger my mind to get those creative juices flowing again. I can spend hours searching and still not find what I want. Sometimes Google just doesn’t cut it and this is where Crayon can help!
Crayon is a search engine targeted for marketers to help generate ideas for marketing campaigns. The platform has an extensive collection with currently over 14 million marketing designs from real businesses (YES, real businesses like SocialSprout, Shopify, and Salesforce.) Crayon is a great resource for not only marketers but designers as well, to help enable creativity.
Searching on Crayon is easy. You can explore using a variety of filters such as page type, industry, CMS, traffic level, and devices. Even better, Crayon has over 40 industries including software, ecommerce, automotive, hospitality, construction, fashion, real estate, healthcare, and much more! The advanced search options allow you to define the type of designs you are interested in collecting. Crayon gives you the option to either view a design now or save for later. When you save any design, these designs are placed into a Collection folder. You can make any of these Collection folders private or public.
Crayon’s home page
Crayon is also a collaborative platform where you can share your findings with others, such as with your marketing team or your clients. Any of the Collections you collaborate with must have an account on Crayon before you can invite them. However, you can always email any of the designs to your team. For those who have an account on Crayon, you can comment on the designs in your Collections. This allows you to get feedback and more ideas. It keeps everyone engaged which can provoke more creativity.
Within each page, Crayon provides you with basic information. You learn the company name, industry, page type, when and where the design was captured, the palette colors used for the page, and the business page link. The palette color is a great feature that makes it easy for designers to view and replicate the colors. The business page link allows you to see the design in action, which can help confirm your opinion. In some cases, the design could have been captured 3 years ago and has since changed. Information about the capture date is helpful members.
Example of a testimonial design in the fashion industry. Page information is located on the right.
Crayon has a lot of great features. Overall, I am very impressed with the simplicity of the layout, which makes it user friendly. I like that you can tweet certain designs. I would like to see Crayon include other social platforms. I think including Pinterest or Facebook would be a great addition to their website. On Crayon, you can also favorite or dislike pages. However, within your Collections (that you share), you are unable to see how many have favorited or disliked each page designs. I think adding a like feature similar to Facebook’s platform would be beneficial to users. Much like Twitter and Pinterest, you can follow Crayon members and view recent activity. You can see the how many designs people have favorited and disliked on their profile pages. Again, you are unable to view what a member has selected for favorites or disliked.
So why am I writing about Crayon? I recently discovered the platform when they launched their mobile platform last week. Since their launch, they have received a lot of press. I stumbled across them and I’m so glad I did! Everyone today is always busy and in a rush to get things done. Crayon is a free tool to help make the process of finding inspiration fast and easy! Between the 14 million pages on Crayon, you are bound to come across something to spark your creativity. If you are a marketer or designer, I would encourage you to visit Crayon’s website sometime and let us know what you think.
Happy searching!
