Inspiration
Over the past two weeks I have been handed multiple projects both at school and with Grok. They encompass brochure design, motion design for a logo, and multiple website designs. When faced with such a multitude of creative challenges it is necessary for me to find the magical thing known as inspiration. Where does one find inspiration? A few places.
While I do thumb through some relevant books and magazines at times like these the majority of my time is spent on the world wide web. The infinite expanse of information. On my computer I have bookmarked a few websites that I consistently refer to for inspiration. Today, I am going to share them with you. For logo design inspiration I refer to www.identityarchives.com, www.brandsoftheworld.com, and my personal favorite www.logopond.com. Specifically for print I sometimes refer to www.stationarystyle.net. And for web I browse www.cssremix.com, www.webdesign-inspiration.com, and the cream of the crop www.webcreme.com. But what about Flash sites? Good question, for inspiration on Flash sites I go to www.thefwa.com or www.bestwebgallery.com. For an organized list of specific types of websites you can visit http://www.vandelaydesign.com/blog/design-inspiration/ which will provide many different categories — however, from my experience, they don’t seem to update it much, if at all. And then, for general inspiration, which is potentialy the most important of all, I visit www.illustrationmundo.com, www.faceoutbooks.com, and the all-powerful www.typographyserved.com. You also might want to check out http://www.howdesign.com/top10sitesfordesigners/ which is updated every month with new websites that are generally portfolio sites. Where did I find all of these websites? Mostly through browsing the web, which is always fun. But one day I came across a splendid website that I plucked a good amount of these sites from and that has many, many more: http://www.aialex.com/2007/07/09/top-50-inspirational-websites-for-designers/ Here is listed 50 of the “top” websites for inspiration. So check it out.
Now, if you got bored reading the above paragraph or it looked too big for you and you inevitably skipped down here than congrats. Right now I am going to reveal my absolute favorite website for inspiration that I visit on a daily basis and refer back to continuously:
This website is basically deviantart for professionals. With daily updated featured work and categorizing abilities such as “Most Recent”, “Most Viewed”, “Most Discussed”, and “Most Appreciated” you will definitely appreciate this website. The Behance Network encompasses work from the fields of Academia, Acrobatics, Advertising, Animation, Architecture, Art Direction, Automotive, Blogging, Branding, Caricature, Carpentry……………….Textile Design, Theatre, Toy Design, Typography, Urbanism, Video Arts, Video Blogging, Video Game Design, Video Jockey, Virtual World Design, Visual Arts, Visual Effects, Web Design, Web Development, Wood Working, and Writing. And I don’t know if you noticed, but I skipped a lot of our alphabet so you wouldn’t have to read that much. But go and check out the rest of the categories and never go anywhere else again.
Well, with all of that said. I’m not encouraging the theft of other designers work or unoriginal designing. These are just places to check out visually pleasing and user-friendly pieces so you can see what works and make something creative on your own.
