"You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." ' Jack London
Getting inspired to design your next t-shirt, logo or web page is not always easy. Whether you've been designing for years or for just days, creative blocks happen to all of us. Thankfully, designers in our generation have access to unlimited resources online to help spark some creative juices and inspire some mind-blowing design work. We've picked some of our favorite design sites below that can help get the ideas flowing.
DESIGN INSPIRATION
1. Dribbble.com
Dribbble is an amazing resource for designers and artists alike. This site features anything and everything from t shirt design and web layouts to logos and typography. The main page shows off a large mashup of trending and new projects to check out. You can explore tons of projects, search by designer or check out portfolios. One of our favorite features is also the jobs section. If you're looking for work, view the best opportunities here and filter by location.
2. Abuzeedo.com
Many of you have probably heard of Abuzeedo through one tutorial site or another. They have an impressive amount of tutorials that are easy to follow and complete. On top of stocking in-depth tutorials for Adobe Programs, they also have a highly organized inspiration section. Under the Collections Tab (which has a pretty cool drop-down animation) you can find a bunch of different creative projects that are sure to get your inspired. In addition to the project showcases you can also find blogs and tips throughout this section.
3. Behance.net
Behance is an amazing creative resource for professional designers and artists alike. Behance allows users to create profiles where they can post their resumes and portfolios and search for jobs. Each art piece you post to the site allows you to see how many views and comments it has had. With such a widespread professional art community, this site is bursting with creative talent and inspirational pieces. Similar to Dribbble, there is also a jobs section where you can search for industry-related positions. The jobs may be harder to weed through, but the positions are high-quality.
4. Mintees.com
Click here to see what our page looks like.
Mintees.com allows designers and businesses alike to post T-shirt designs. People can vote for and "like" other tees, which may give artists a gauge as to how a design will sell. There are tons of different ways to filter the designs if you've got something specific in mind. This site offers such a wide range of designs and styles that it would be hard to not find something inspiring.
5. deviantART.com
DeviantART is the gold mine of design sites - there's millions of inspirational pieces from photography and digital art to illustration and tee designs. You just have to dig for it. Their site is organized by tons of categories, which can be helpful if you know what you're looking for. With a login, you can add a piece of inspirational art to your "favorites" or become a watcher of that artist.
6. Creattica
Creattica has over 15,000 featured designs to browse through, which provides an amazing creative platform for designers and artists. Their user interface and navigation also make it easy to find the things you're looking for. Designs are usually posted with high-quality large images so its easy to see all the fine details and handiwork of the artists. The overall work is also pretty impressive and something to strive for.
COLOR INSPIRATION
7. ColourLovers
Colourlovers is a large art and design community that shares and inspires through color palettes. When you hit the homepage, you're met with a large mix of inspirational work that artists share from specific colors to fonts and patterns. Under the Browse Tab you can find more specific ways to search and browse color choices. You can also search through their Community Tab for help from other designers, and through their Trending Tab to see creative examples of many different kinds of design work.
8. Adobe Kuler
Adobe Kuler is an extended project of the Adobe System Software and assists designers with their color choices. This website is extremely helpful because of the simple user interface, which allows users to switch colors around easily and provides them with HEX and RBG codes. Artists can not only make their own unique color palettes, they can also customize the color wheel to display colors in analogous, monochromatic, complementary and triad forms (which can make picking colors a WHOLE lot easier). With a login, you can save all your favorite palettes. If you want to be inspired by others, you can also search color palettes by popular theme and keyword.
Side Note: An extension of Adobe Kuler is already available in the Adobe programs, so you can save your color palettes from the website (with a login) and access them in your favorite Adobe design program.
