As a designer, wherever I go, I'm always looking for design inspiration and there's nothing better than a weekend away to refresh the creative juices. Lisbon was full of inspiration, mainly from the stunning tiles that bedeck most of the buildings there. They are used for decoration but also as a form of temperature control, and as protection from the rain.
I love the blue and white tiles. Some appear to be handpainted, others are printed.
I even loved these blue and white tiles cover in graffiti. It creates a type of montage.
This beautiful design is a close up of a tile I saw in the Gulbenkian Museum.
The tiles above have a washy feel to them, as if they were stencilled with a thick brush, or perhaps a resist technique was used.
The yellow and blue tiles above were some of the few that we saw in relief and are probably older than most. This technique was used before painted and printed tiles were developed.
The tiles below were also seen in the Gulbenkian Museum.
Even the pavements (below) were made of tiles and pieced together like a mosaic. I can only imagine the amount of time it took to pave the whole of Lisbon like this, but the effect is stunning.
