Finding Inspiration
From time to time we all hit design funks when inspiration is hard to find and everything we make seems to look like crap (at least I do). Having some solid sources you can fall back on while in a slump can be a great asset.
Most people I ask about inspiration will say something like "Inspiration is everywhere!" Which is true (like telling a sprinter to run faster… thanks coach), but not very helpful when you sitting in a cubical or office and you need to build a comp. And I know, when I’m sitting in a coffee shop relaxing, that last thing I want to do is look around for inspiration or wait for it to hit me.
For many years I’ve taken inspiration and creativity for granted, but when you go through a time where the ideas aren’t firing at you as fast as you’d like, you have to seek them out. Recently I’ve have to do that; so I thought I’d share my sources.
- EDU Style
- EDU Style is a new source I found. University sites usually have a pretty distinct style, as they convey a different message than most blogs or corporate sites. This is a great source for ideas.
- Design Meltdown
- Design Meltdown is a neat gallery run by Patrick McNeil. Thousands of sites to look through. Patrick McNeil gave a real good talk at FOWD08 about finding inspiration, you can view his presentation slides on SlideShare.
- Daily Design Workout
- Daily Design Workout is a very interesting project. Jonas Buntenbruch posts a new design every day, mostly images, but a very good source of daily inspiration.
- Flickr 7days
- Flickr 7days shows a random assortment of images that have been uploaded to Flickr in the last 7 days. It’s neat to look through, and every once in a while you’ll run into a cool picture you can grab some ideas from.
- Twitter public timeline
- Millions of people all over the world use Twitter every day, and a lot of them post links. Just go through the public timeline and click some of the links people post, check out the design; you never know what’ll be there.
- OpenID site directory
- The OpenID site directory is a fairly comprehensive list of all sites that integrate OpenID. It’s a massive list of web sites, why not click around?
Doing a Google search for "CSS Gallery" will turn up some good sites too (like cssmania and css beauty), but I think most us know about those, so I opted to leave most of them out of my list.
A neat source for typography inspiration is any magazine you can get your hands on. Magazines use so many different typographical styles that by just looking through a few different ones you can a ton of ideas to apply to your site(s).
Those are just a few things I’ve done to try and get out of a design slump, hopefully they’ll be helpful for you.
Where do you get YOUR inspiration?
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I like thumbing through art appreciation books, you can always get some good stylistic ideas from there
Web Designer Wall in general is nice, but they just put out this post:
2008 trends
Is it inspiration or influence? hmmmm
Totally unrelated question, what code wrangler do you use? I’ve used Dreamweaver as a staple for a long time, but get frustrated with it from time to time. I’m flirting with Aptana Studio and so far so good. Having real-time validation for all docs (including php) is really nice.
I always like those current trend posts. I think the only style in there I don’t like is the wood pattern… looks weird to me.
I use Dreamweaver, but primarily as a text editor & for FTP. I’ve just used it for some long that once I stopped using the main features, I was so used to the interface that I just continued.
Zend Studio is pretty nice too, I was using that for a while.
If you can get a Mac (or have one), give Coda a try.
I haven’t done anything with Apatana yet, I’ll have to poke around in it some. I’d like the real-time validation, that’d be nice to have.
I’ll give Coda a try, I do like Macs… don’t like wood eh? Check out this website I work with at my job… Wood and Paper Science
i don’t care for wood when it’s purely for design. It definitely makes sense to use in a Wood and Paper Sciences course though. Nice looking site
Looking slick around here Tim. I dig the new changes.
Thanks man, there’s still some tweeking and functions I need to write, but I think it’s coming along. Your wordpress screencast(s) helped out