WEB DESIGN: 5 Sites To Get Inspiration and Ideas

The creative industry, like the fashion industry, follows a pattern. Sooner or later a certain colour, style, shape will go out of style, and your designs will look dated. Some people are gifted in design, and make their own styles dictate the terms of what is cool, but many of us who just do the occasional blog or banner are stuck with our styles from the time when we learnt those techniques.

Design inspiration sites help you refresh your concepts. You look at the work of the best designers, and incorporate – not copy – those concepts into your own. There are tons of websites and blogs that showcase creative design content, but here are some that actually specialise at the task. Here are some of my favorite sites to get inspiration and ideas for webdesign and other design projects.

FaveUp

One of my favourite design sites, Faveup features categories for logos, business cards, flash websites and CSS websites. The submissions are hand picked by the staff, which ensures that only the best of designs get through. Seriously, there’s no junk in here. The site itself is pleasant to look at, with minimal ads and interruptions (although a bit of a pain to navigate). From the day I discovered it, FaveUp has stayed in my bookmarks.

Web Creme

If designing websites is your thing, you’re going to love WebCreme. The site provides a daily dose of websites that reeks of quality. These are not concept sites but real websites that are designed by professionals.

Web Creme also has a pleasant design of its own, with ads tastefully placed so as to not interrupt your great enlightenment!

Logo Pond

For logo design ideas, look no further than Logo Pond. Featuring an extremely large user base, constantly fed with logos. The quality control isn’t as tight, but most of the logos that come through are solid. You can even hire designers or buy logos directly from the site.

DesignFLAVR

If Photoshop, Illustrator or one of these graphic editors is your kind of application, DesignFLAVR is your kind of site. While it includes CSS and Flash website categories, its main content revolves around digital art, advertising, photo manipulation and such.

The artwork isn’t necessarily done by professionals, but it’s a lot better than weeding through hundreds of amateur submissions on DeviantArt. The site is updated regularly with decent quality content.

I Love Typography

What is design without type? Typography is a means of communicating with the viewer, spelling out the words we speak. Started by graphic designer John Boardley just over a year ago, the I Love Typography blog has taken the design world by storm. iLT features a brilliant site design, well written articles and is a great resource for finding type used in the most unique ways.

The site will also prove to be an excellent font resource for your design needs. You might also want to take a look at these free font download catalogues.

That completes my creative fodder. What remains is of course, putting it all to practice. What is your regular stop for design inspiration?

Photo Credit : I’m Your Pusher