The Designer Inspiration Thread

nvanprooyen

nvanprooyen

Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat
Dec 8, 2008
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Orlando, FL
I decided to spend some time today going through a bunch of sites and trying to get some fresh inspiration for my design work. Figured I would share some of the links I came across here. Some really nice stuff in a few of these. I particularly like the texture and large photo ones.

Creative Headers

60 Creative Header Design / Inspiration / Splashnology - Web Design and Web Technology Community

Large Photo Background Sites

Showcase Of Websites With Large Photo Background | AcrisDesign

Fun With Textures

Web Designs that Use Textures Beautifully

Kick Ass Navigation

30 beautiful Website Navigation | Underworld Magazines Design Blog | UnderWorld Magazines

Contact Forms

Interface Design Inspiration - 36 Beautiful Contact Page/Form Designs | Dzine Blog


Hopefully more people will contribute and the designers in the house will have a great thread to reference when things start getting stale...
 


I don't have any specific sites to share but I read TechCrunch everyday. A lot of the startups are drunk on VC money so they can afford really nice design (and very up to date on trends), the ones I like get tagged as "UI" (I'm more into interfaces as opposed to landers) for review when building my web apps. A few examples:

Investimonials Wants To Be Your Guide To Quality Financial Products
NeighborGoods: Sharing Returns To Its Physical Roots
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/scvngr-user-profiles/
 
This is somewhat related to the OP's thread, but figured I'd throw this thought in here..

A fuckin excellent way to build exposure, SEO, etc.. particularly quality 1-way links the targeted anchor text are to:

(a) Write tutorials, publish them on your site and submit them as tips to sites like smashingmagazine and all the sites in their network (tons)
(b) Write custom content for those same sites. A lot of them accept work submitted from random authors, and have guidelines about how to write/structure the tutorial/article/guide etc..

I recently did both (a) and (b) and both paid off. (a) I was able to get a link mentioned in a recent smashingmagazine poster roundup list (consequently I'm ranking good now because SM has a ton of authority) and (b) I spent a couple hours on an article and it was accepted by a pretty big site, and I got a very juicy 1-way out of the deal within the article. I told them I didn't even want paid (which most offer payment for writing content), just that I'd like to be able to link out to my site with specific anchor text.

Photoshop Poster Design Tutorial | 20 Years of Photoshop is the tut I wrote that got a mention at SM
How to use the article I wrote.

Oh and another way to gain exposure is to write for actual design magazines. Just a simple matter of contacting the editor. One designer that has really used this method effectively is Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design (his blog is down atm, www.justcreativedesign.com but when it's up, there's an area where he lists the mags he's written for etc). Can help build authority that you can place on your design site(s) for potential clients to see.
 
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I like to check out the designs on www.Creattica.com Its part of the Envato network (tutsplus, themeforest, codecanyon etc) They showcase a lot of designs for tons of different things like html/css, flash, business cards, logos, etc.

Edit: That www.moluv.com is great!
 
Here's an itsy bitsy tiny sampling out of my bookmarks...

101 Spectacular Cars Website Designs | Template Monster Blog 15 Useful HTML5 Tutorials and Cheat Sheets | Tutorials 150 Best Social Networks Sections on Designers’ Websites – the Sequel! | Template Monster Blog 150 Website Designs Based on Rich Textures | Template Monster Blog 20 High Quality Photoshop Web Design Tutorials | Tutorials 30 Beautiful Real Estate Websites - Smashing Magazine 40 of the Best Horizontal Scrolling Websites | Web Design Ledger 50 Green Web Designs to Inspire You | Inspiration 50 Retro and Vintage Web Designs to Inspire You | Inspiration 50 Staggering Wordpress Video Blog Designs! | Template Monster Blog 55 Inspiring Examples of Gradients in Web Design | Inspiration 55 Inspiring Examples of Slideshows in Web Design | Inspiration 55 Minimal Black and White Web Designs to Inspire You | Inspiration A Showcase of Watercolor in Web Design | Webdesigner Depot Coolshowcase: Showcase of digital illustration, design, fine art, traditional art, photography, digital art, 3d and more... Design Moves Me Fascinating Flash Sites for Inspiration, Part 2 | Template Monster Blog Showcase of Web Design in Romania | reADactor 60 Minimal and Super Clean Web Designs to Inspire You | Inspiration 30 of the Best Web Typography Resources Online | Webdesigner Depot 34 Inspiring iPad Application Websites | Inspiration 55 Creative ‘Coming Soon’ Pages | Template Monster Blog 20 Elegant Fonts for Clean Design | Freebies Back From The Future: Sleek Web Design Inspiration | Circlebox Blog 40 Creative 404 Error Pages to Inspire You | Inspiration 50 Corporate Website Examples | Naldz Graphics 40 Tasty Restaurant Websites to Inspire You | Inspiration 20 Websites with Carefully Crafted and Convincing Copy | Design Shack 50 Most Prominent Custom Facebook Pages | Inspired Magazine Fashion-Forward Showcase: 88 Beautiful Apparel Online Stores | Template Monster Blog
 
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