There is no shortage of inspiring places to find amazing web design on the Intenet. What there is a shortage of, however, is time. Your time. You want to be creating, not consuming, so how do you know where to find the best examples of web design to inspire and help your own work?
We’ve gathered together some of the best, most inspiring and most useful web design resources. Whatever you’re building, and whatever inspiration you’re looking forward, you should find it here.
Premium Pixels
Premium Pixels touts itself as “Free Stuff or Creative Folk”, and it really is as simple and as useful as that. It’s a fantastic resource of PSDs, pattern files, brushes and more, easy to navigate using the tag index to find exactly what you want. In seconds you can have any of the resources downloaded and ready to get you off and running on your next project.
Why so inspiring?
What’s inspiring about Premium Pixels is the ethos behind it. Web designer Orman Clark started creating his own Photoshop resources after unsuccessfully searching for a particular style of brush. If it’s not out there, make it yourself! But Orman’s ever-growing resource at Premium Pixels ensures that you hopefully will never have the fruitless search that he had.
By offering all his resources for free, and making them available for use in both personal and commercial projects, Premium Pixels also frees you to be creative. Find what you need, download, and use all that energy you saved in creating something amazing.
Grid Assault
If you’re designing a portfolio, a shop, or any site where you want to display a lot of visual content, then a grid layout is probably the way to go. Mind you, I’m not talking about the ubiquitous design construction grid here, but the Pinterest-style way of laying out visual information that has become popular in recent times. And Grid Assault as a beautiful place to get inspired.
The team at Grid Assault have put together a fantastic showcase of sites, all of which use a grid layout. Immediately you notice how eye-catching grid layouts are, and the site draws you in to browse through them and get inspired.
Why so inspiring?
If you were under the impression that grid layouts were boring, then Grid Assault will prove you wrong. It only takes a few minutes browsing through their site to show you how vaired and unique grid designs can be. If you are considering using a grid layout in your next project, then Grid Assault cannot fail to inspire you. The site’s own grid layout is a pleasure to use, and it (along with the content) displays just what is possible with grids.
One Page Love
When creating a website, one of the best design maxims to follow is to keep it simple. And it doesn’t get much more simple than restricting your website to a single page.
Of course, building a one page site brings about its own problems. Users need enough information to know what the site is selling or promoting, to make a decision and to act upon it, whether that decision is buying something, subscribing, sharing, whatever.
One Page Love is a brilliant resource that shows you how to get one page sites right. It’s an inspiring showcase of landing pages, portfolios, sign-ups, placeholders, online applications and download sites.
Why so inspiring?
One page sites are often designed with a very specific purpose in mind – often to hard-sell a product or to get a quick decision from users to sign up to a mailing list. This means the stakes are high, so if you are making a site like this then the design has to be spot on. Designers can easily navigate One Page Love and find one page sites similar to what they want to create, to be inspired and to see what works.
UI Parade
The devil is in the details, they say, and they are certainly incredibly important in any app or website. These things that we build are not static documents or images but interactive experiences that must be usable as well as beautiful.
Getting each and every element right is imperative, and a browse through Ui Parade is sure to inspire you onto the right track.
Ui Parade is a wonderful showcase that focuses on the details. What is great about Ui Parade is that it features elements that you might otherwise overlook, such as pagination, search boxes and progress bars. To create an engaging, seamless and consistent Ui, you have to take even the smallest detail into consideration, and Ui Parade has these covered.
Why so inspiring?
Every element on Ui Parade looks gorgeous, and it’s a pleasure to browse through, but what is really useful about the site is the simple yet incredibly insightful details written up about each one. This ensures that you are never at a loss as to why you love a particular element, or why it seems to work so well on the page. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way.
Awwwards
There is so much web design to look at on the Internet, but you want to see the best, right? Awwwards is a site that seeks to award and showcase the very best developers, designers and web agencies from around the world.
The jury is made up from a wide selection of designers, journalists and agencies, evaluating submissions via strict rules and scoring for Design, Creativity, Usability and Content: ensuring that winning entries not only look amazing, but work well with their content, are engaging for their users and push the boundaries of what web design can do.
Why so inspiring?
Featuring, awarding and promoting the very best wed design around the world, Awwwards is a truly excellent place to become inspired by design that has been recognised as being of the highest quality. There is a wonderful community vibe to the site, which is explained best in the words of the Awwwards team:
Our goal is to create a meeting point where web developers, designers and agencies across the world can share experiences, inspiration and knowledge: A community that bids for a more accessible, usable and beautiful Internet.
Creattica
Creattica is a powerful and wide-ranging resource for design inspiration. It features everything from UI elements, logos and icons to full website and web app showcases of the best uses of HTML and CSS.
Creattica invites you to get involved – it is an open community that anyone can submit their work to, and anyone can vote on items that are featured.
Why so inspiring?
You can really get your teeth into Creattica. There is so much to get inspired by, and you can really get involved and submit your own work to hopefully inspire others. There is even an extensive and growing collection for excellent freebies to download to get you started and help you on your way. Don’t just get inspired, get working!
PSDBucket
Those looking for a daily dose of inspiration could do little better than checking out PSDBucket. Not only serving as a excellent source to get inspired, everything featured is available to download to begin using immediately.
Why so inspiring?
One thing I really love about PSDBucket is the ‘Browse By Color’ feature. This does exactly what it says on the tin, and is nicely implemented with a simple color scale. You can then fine tune the color variance and minimum percentages, making it possible to very specifically search for elements and inspiriation of a particular nature. This makes PSD Bucket incredibly useful, and means you can be inspired in exactly the way you need.
Designers’ List
For everything else, there’s Designers’ List. Quite simply, it is a list of resources for designers, everything from blogs to inspiring communities, to free resources, CSS galleries, fonts and more.
You could spend ages going through all the links on Designers’ List, and you are almost guaranteed to find something useful and inspiring.
Why so inspiring?
Designers’ List isn’t particularly inspiring in itself, but what is inspiring is to see such a long list (that you can add to) of incredible resources that designers can take advantage of.
Image Credit: LindsayT
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