CSSKarma

Finding Inspiration

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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?

Tags: design, inspiration, links

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