It's Nice That is still the best way to start a creative day

Some sites you visit for a reason. It's Nice That is one you visit out of habit, usually with a coffee, usually before you've properly started work. You open it to check one thing and twenty minutes later you've read about a risograph studio, a stop-motion director and a type designer you'd never heard of before breakfast.

That's kind of the point.

It's been running since 2007, out of an office on Old Street in London, and it covers pretty much everything creative people make: graphic design, illustration, photography, animation, fashion, architecture, advertising, film. It pulls in over 8 million readers a month now, which makes it one of the biggest creative publications around, but it still reads like it's put together by people who actually care about the work.

What's on there

The site is split into four broad areas, and they're worth knowing because they read quite differently.

Projects and creatives is the bread and butter. Short features on new work, with plenty of images and a few paragraphs on who made it and why. This is where most of the discovery happens.

Insights and opinion is where the longer thinking lives. Industry trends, essays, interviews that go a bit deeper than "tell us about your process."

Advice and resources is the practical stuff. Pricing, portfolios, pitching, how to survive your first year freelancing. Genuinely useful if you're early in your career, and a decent sanity check if you're not.

Culture and lifestyle is the loosest section, and sometimes the most fun. Music, books, the things creative people get obsessed with when they're not working.

Why it's still worth your time

The big thing It's Nice That does well is range. A lot of design sites end up showing you the same twenty studios on rotation. It's Nice That has a real knack for finding people early, often students or recent grads, before they're everywhere. If you want to know who's going to be doing interesting work in a couple of years, this is a good place to look.

The writing is also a notch above most. Features are short but they're not lazy. There's usually a line or two in there that tells you something about the work you wouldn't have picked up from the images alone.

And it's broad enough that it keeps you out of your own lane. If you're a brand designer, reading about an animator's process or a photographer's lighting setup does more for your thinking than another rebrand case study.

Beyond the site

It's Nice That is part of Residence, a wider network of creative businesses, which is why a few related things sit around it:

• Creative Lives in Progress focuses on careers and emerging talent (it's in the Stash directory too).
• If You Could Jobs is the creative jobs board, and one of the better ones if you're hiring or looking.
• Nicer Tuesdays is their long-running live event series, with creatives talking through their work in front of an audience.

There are also a handful of newsletters if you'd rather have it come to you.

Heads up

Because it covers so much, it can feel a bit scattered if you're after something specific. It's a browsing site, not a reference library. If you need every packaging project from the last five years, you're better off somewhere like Dieline.

It also leans towards the UK and Europe. That's not a knock, the coverage is global, but you'll notice the London perspective now and then.

Who it's for

Anyone in a creative job who wants to stay curious. Students and grads looking for a sense of what's out there. Art directors hunting for illustrators and photographers. Anyone who's felt their taste going a bit stale and needs a shake-up.

Make it your first tab of the morning for a week. Worst case, you've read some good things. Best case, you've found your next collaborator.

Written by Steve Salgado