inspiration. Mural.ly: Visual Collaboration For Visual People
The Easiest Way To Think, Imagine, And Discuss Your Ideas
There has never been a better time to be a creative professional in the fashion industry! The tools available today make gathering inspiration, expressing ideas, and sharing your work with millions easier than ever before.
I recently discovered this ingenious tool - Mural.ly - that aims to enable visual people (like ourselves) to shape ideas together, by fully unleashing our imagination without getting in the way of our flow. Fabulous, right?!
So, What is Mural.ly?
Mural.ly is a new web-based application that lets you create your own virtual pinboards, posting and arranging inspiring images, notes and more to spur your imagination. It also enables small teams to collaborate on murals, bringing a new dimension to team creativity.
The tool itself can be used in a large variety of ways, just like a cork board can, and so the instructions leave much to the imagination. Some of the provided usage examples include using it to brainstorm a fashion designer’s upcoming summer collection.
And What Are Murals Exactly?
Murals are web pages that are like scrolling whiteboards. Its zoomable interface allows users to zoom out to see the big picture, and zoom in for the details and story.
Murals can hold pictures, links to web content, links to files/documents from multiple sources including YouTube, Vimeo, Pinterest, Google Maps and Drop Box. Each of the elements in a Mural, along with the Mural itself, is shareable.
It's very simple to collect content from any online source. Just author the space freely with text, shapes and sticky notes. Everything is made for easy communication with an added benefit to participate in threaded conversations with a team.
What Makes Mural.ly So Unique?
It is deliberately less structured than other collaboration products and more focused on creativity.
“Most collaboration software out there is too structured: text, tables, and image uploads in a structured format that is not very suitable for imagination,” co-founder and CEO Mariano Suarez Battan says. “They need something easy and flexible to use to help them stay in the flow and let their ideas grow.”
Sharing and Collaborating
Mural.ly is so much more than just creating great things on your web canvas. You can share your creation directly to Facebook and Twitter, embed it on a website or your blog, and even invite people by email.
What's nice about this is that you can make your project as public or private as you want. If are working on something secret, you can invite a few people to see what you are doing or you can also share it with the world!
In essence, thinking visually can be a lot more powerful than just thinking internally or out loud. It can help you brainstorm effectively, create a vision board, clarify ideas, solve problems and make decisions quickly. Check out Mural.ly for yourself and tell me if or how it sparked inspiration for you!
