Design Inspiration
We all need inspiration every once in a while, and I have a few favorite sites I’d like to share with all of you. Some of these may be obvious, some may not, but I’m including the obvious ones because I realize a lot of people who read BittBox may be new to design. If you fall into that category, bookmark these sites (a couple of which are in my sidebar). We all get stuck sometimes, and when that happens, I like to stop everything, sit back and surf for inspiration. Or just to try and take in some new ideas.
My 2 Favorites (by far):
These 2 sites are more like a goal to me. Both of these artists are not only cutting edge, but on top of their game and highly-sought-after. I love the style and I find their work inspiring and incredibly eye-pleasing.
Neil Duerden :: Farm
A self confessed mac monkey based in a rural miners cottage 20 miles north of Manchester (UK), I create pieces that combine elements from mixed media, photography that are interlaced with complex vectors to create pieces that always hit the brief for clients all around the world.
Radim Malinic – Brand Nu
Radim Malinic, the creative force behind Brand Nu, prides himself on his artistic sensibility. His work has been described as imaginative, sophisticated, sensual and sexy. While his goal is to fulfill the needs of his client, he creates contemporary visions that are a complex montage of layered photographic and colorful elements. His award winning creations could be and have been used in books, magazines, corporate identity, CD?s and DVD?s, posters, and fine art picture collectionslist full of returning custom.
Album Art
Sometimes I like to search for album art or CD cover art to find inspiration. My preferences align well with a lot of album artwork so I find this type of artwork useful in order to gather ideas to use in things I do. (which doesn’t include CD art).
Typically, I use 2 different ways to view album art, the first Being Flickr (I find it to be more accurate). I usually just do a search for Album Cover, and Album Art. I’m always surprised at some of the wicked album covers I’ve never seen. There is some really interesting stuff to look at in the world of album art. Seriously, why or how else would you get to see these miniature works of art, unless you bought the album, or it was so famous that it reaches iconic status? I think album art is a very untapped source for inspiration.
Second, I sometimes do a Google Image Search for Album Cover to see what I can find. It’s way less accurate than Flickr, but lots more results. Also, the site containing the image you click on sometimes has more than one, and maybe even a gallery of covers.
Design Tutorial Blogs:
A lot of tutorial blogs often make collections of “good” designs for us to look at for inspiration. Here are some that I’ve found.
Smashing Magazine
50 Beautiful CSS – Based Web Designs in 2006
45 Fresh, Clean and Impressive Designs
30 Dark Designs you Should’ve Seen
83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
TutorialBlog
30 Great Website Designs (Part 1)
CSS Design Galleries:
I like to browse CSS design galleries, not only to see some excellent CSS in action, but to feast on some cool visuals. These galleries pride themselves on showing you the best of the best as far as CSS goes, but there are tons of unique visual styles to checkout. You can stumble across the perfect button style, creative headers, unique menus/navigation, and lots more. If you are thinking of starting a website or blog and can’t decide on a style, this is where you start.
Blog Themes:
Along with all of the cool designs above, I sometimes like to browse the different Themes available for bloggers. Some of the good theme designers out there put a lot of effort into their work, and you can often get inspired just by looking at the themes. There are lots of creative designs and lots of creative elements within those designs. I use Wordpress, and it has a huge theme directory with lots of filters for easy viewing:
iStock
I know, istock isn’t normally thought of as an inspiration site, but every time I go there, my mind floods with ideas. Just do a search for something you’re interested in (like Swirls or Vector Grunge), and see what you can find. You don’t have to buy anything to get inspiration. You can download the preview and use it as a guide while trying out new things on your own.
On the topic of design inspiration, there is alot of free stuff out there that can inspire. Good choice of a topic bittbox.
Fonts, pictures, etc found via bluevertigo are pretty neat, though the site may be an overload of linkage for some:
http://www.bluevertigo.com.ar/bluevertigo.htm
Wow – just what I needed! I was just surfing around for inspiration for a new project. Thanks so much!
Thanks a lot for answering my request.
Digg it at: http://digg.com/design/Loads_Of_Inspiration_For_Designers
Well worth digging!
Boo that i wasn’t in there :)
Happy Friday man.
lawton
If you like Brand Nu’s work you should check out these (my personal favs)
http://www.hydro74.com
http://www.fatoe.com
http://www.vault49.com
http://www.iso50.com
http://www.iamalwayshungry.com
http://www.antigirl.com
http://www.hejz.com
http://www.designmeltdown.com is a site I regularly go for inspiration. It’s very well organized too, sites are groups by color, style or usage.
@Joe
Thanks, those are some good ones!
I’ve actually seen some of vault49’s work in Advanced Photoshop Magazine.
Good stuff.
~BittBox
Thank you for posting this…
Just in time! I need more inspiration for my freelance work..
Yeah my fav two out of that bunch I linked is Hydro74 and Fatoe. Their work is wonderful.
Ahhh. Advanced Photoshop :) I was actually in issue #25 I believe. Pretty excited about that. Overall it’s an excellent mag with alot of great inspiration. It’s starting to blow Computer Arts out of the water.
Thank you for all of these links, I am bookmarking like crazy!
Great sites, thanks!! Talking about great sites .. [url]http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=604941[/url]
Those lists of designs were quite helpful. Though I consider myself to be a hack as a designer, they should still be beneficial. ;)
Hello BB,
I had a question you may be able to help with. With all the illustrative elements being incorporated to photographs and designs, would you say that the majority of this work is being added in Illustrator or with Photoshop. There are masking techniques that would be easier in PS but Illustrator would be easier when adding gradients to complex patterns and graffics. I come from a deep PS background so I would appreciate your thoughts from an Illustrator point of view.
many thanks,
Rob
There’s some cool, inspirational, modern album art and cover design at:
http://www.cddesign.com
Nice post, I like the CSS references. I’m a bit new to using CSS as for layouts.
good job again. i always go to veer.com for insipration. sometimes imagebank.com too.
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! pudzeleddjpmp
Hello, thanks for your job and all the greta links you share with us.
So check one of my favourite vector artis below :
http://www.techvector.com/
amazing realistic vector art, true inspirationnal
peace
Neil Duerden is absolutely incredible. Awesome inspiration!
What a great article and list of links. These are all great links too, I really enjoyed them…they are all exceptional sites. I just wrote an article that lists 180+ resources online for design inspiration and I liked your article so much that I added your link to the article.
Thanks.
Rachel
Dear BittBox,
First, I love your site! It’s fresh and interesting …
I really would like your opinion, I am trying to finish my portfolio design and I was wondering what you all think of it.
I could use some critiques for the design … hopefully good ones. It was built with Flash since I don’t really know anything about HTML.
Please be gentle, it’s my first web design, my expertise is print :)
Thanks again and here is the link …
http://blogadivi.blogspot.com/