When designing a webpage it’s always a good idea to do some research: What are the current trends and developments and possibly new techniques to implement, that will ultimately improve the quality and the standard of your work? The way other designers have unique ways to solve problems can inspire us to do better. So here are some of my personal bookmarks – websites I visit for my inspiration (in alphabetical order)
Every designer should be aware of Adobe Kuler for their color scheme inspiration. Countless designers have shared their favorite color combinations. The sites tool gives a handy overview which colors complement each other.
A webdesign award that actually has some credibility. Big budget websites get to show off their implementation of the latest technologies. There is a site of the day, month and year. Enough content to find high level inspiration.
On this website designers can post their own work and share their portfolios with the world. Not primarily focused on web design it shows work and portfolios from all areas of the creative sector.
Codrops has earned its right to be added to this list for their amazing work with inspiring interaction elements using the latest technologies. Granted not everything is as useful but they give great inspiration of what can also be done using CSS and Javascript.
This website is a show and tell for designers. A lot of the work consists of mockups and practice projects that can inspire you to approach a creative problem from a unique angle. Because anyone can post their work the overall quality varies. Know where to look for.
The web design trend that has earned its right to stay is the single page website. This inspiration website shows off the best of the one page sites out there. Submissions are categorized with tags to make it easier to narrow down your search for something specific.
An “anyone can submit their site” inspiration website. You will find a lot of large brands and design studios showing off their latest websites. The site provides extensive filters to curate the search for your search of that one site that inspires you.
“Sites we like” is a simple curated webpage where a few people post sites they like to share with the world. Because the submissions are all of personal taste you might find a few gems that you won’t find on some of the bigger design inspiration websites.
As the name suggests, the showcase website does have a collection of very nice sites. Using a basic tagging system to categorize the submissions it’s a clean and user friendly website that has its fair share of inspiration material.
This site has been in my bookmarks for years and is still a good place to find nice websites. The site uses a color filter system to categorize the sites. This is an interesting and user friendly approach that makes it easy to get inspiration for specific color combinations and designs out there.
