# How to Get References

> Great work starts with great inputs.

- Section: Craft
- URL: https://critly.vercel.app/how-to-get-references
- Published: 2026-07-15
- Source: https://github.com/kausthubh-coder/critly/blob/main/content/craft/how-to-get-references.mdx

If all your references are other interfaces, your work drifts toward the
average of everything on Dribbble. The work that feels like it came from
somewhere usually pulls from outside the discipline.

Shu Ding keeps a list of [the best things](https://shud.in/thoughts/the-best-things)
he has found. It has Kurosawa, Pink Floyd, Borges and Feynman on it, and almost
no software.

**Collect references from outside your field, and borrow how they work, not
how they look.**

## Where to look

**Film.** Editors were guiding the eye through a change long before screens
had transitions. Rauno Freiberg's essay on
[designing depth](https://rauno.me/craft/depth) starts with film composition
and ends at the backdrop behind an overlay, which he blurs the way a lens would.

> **Interactive demo: Depth Of Field.** Open https://critly.vercel.app/how-to-get-references to try it.

Flat only dims. Depth pushes the page back and softens it, so the dialog sits
in front the way a face sits in front of a blurred street. Nothing about that
is native to screens. It was borrowed.

**Print.** Grids, rhythm and restraint were worked out on paper. Vercel says
its [Geist](https://vercel.com/font) typeface draws on the Swiss design
movement.

**Music.** Easing is phrasing. Stagger is rhythm. The copy sound on this site
is a rising C-E-G-C arpeggio, because music already knew what "done" sounds
like.

**Physical things.** Pick up a well-made tool and notice how it stops moving.

## Translate, don't transplant

Copy what a reference looks like and you get a costume. Copy what it does and
you get a mechanism.

Lists on the iPhone don't look like rubber. They behave like it: pull past the
end and the list gives way less and less the further you go, then snaps back.
Drag both lists down.

> **Interactive demo: Rubber Band.** Open https://critly.vercel.app/how-to-get-references to try it.

The hard stop ignores you. The rubber band answers: you were heard, and there
is nothing more here.

Paco Coursey [argues](https://paco.me/writing/creative-output) that anything
new in design is old work reworked in new ways. That is fine, as long as what
you rework is the mechanism and not the pixels.

## Make it a practice

**Capture them.** A folder, an [Are.na](https://www.are.na) channel, a camera
roll of door handles and ticket stubs.

**Name what each one does.** Write one line on how it directs attention, how
it builds tension, or what it leaves out. If you can explain what a reference
taught you without showing it to anyone, it was a good one.

## Resources

- [Designing Depth](https://rauno.me/craft/depth): Rauno Freiberg takes "dirtying the frame" from film and turns it into blurred backdrops, layering and choreography.
- [Contrasting Aesthetics](https://rauno.me/craft/contrasting-aesthetics): Why novelty is usually found where unrelated disciplines and styles meet.
- [Creative Output](https://paco.me/writing/creative-output): Paco Coursey on whether work built from other people's ideas still counts as your own.
- [The Best Things](https://shud.in/thoughts/the-best-things): Shu Ding's list of favourite work, from Kurosawa to Borges, with almost no software in it.
- [Are.na](https://www.are.na): A quiet place to collect references without an algorithm deciding what you see next.