The best designers don't wait around for inspiration to strike. They go after it with a club. And so, we present to you the ultimate guide to inspiration resources in 2012. Each site excels at doing what they do best, so it would be hard (read: impossible) to give a fair ranking to each. Take a look and get inspired!
- Behance: a "leading online platform to showcase and discover creative work."
- Swiss Miss: Tina Roth Eisenberg's daily design journal.
- NotCot: An empire of sites with a wide variety of design focuses.
- Cool Hunting: Inspiration collections in design, tech, art and culture.
- Muse: An artist-focused gallery updated frequently with a great selection of links.
- Veer: Concentrated on ideas with a real design foundation, their blog is worth check out too.
- Design Shack: A showcase of web design and tutorials.
- ColourLovers: Most commonly known for their Themeleon for Twitter, CL has plenty on web and print trends plus a few excellent tools too.
- TypeChart: "lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS." Very useful.
- WebCreme: Inspiration focused on webpage layouts and general views.
- DesignFlavr: Visual inspiration updated daily for multiple art forms, including CSS websites, design comps, CG, wallpapers and photography.
- LogoMoose: Tons of logo inspiration, with a great blog, awards and forums to engage in.
- Brands of the World: A site centered on the creative world and all that entails.
- Brand New: By UnderConsideration, this is an excellent site for branding and corporate identity design.
- Deviantart: A jumble of insanely good art created by a slew of talented artists around the world. Very good for imagery inspiration.
- FaveUp: Excellent for all sorts of design work, including business cards, Flash, HTML/CSS, logos, posters and more.
- LogoPond: A sortable gallery of all sorts of identity inspirations.
- 1st Web Designer: Lots of inspiration for your web work, not limited to visuals, but also user interaction and general process tips.
- Ads of the World: Related to Brands of the World, this is a great resource for advertising inspiration.
- UCreative: Upcoming social network for creatives, with a wide variety of creative blogs and user interaction, where you can showcase your work and solicit feedback.
- CSSmoon: CSS web design inspirational gallery full of corporate and personal sites.
- Beautifully: Part gallery inspiration and part news source, these guys do a great job of presenting the most attractive and clever sites out there.
- WebDesignerWall: Excellent for following trends and gaining inspiration for specific markets or styles.
- WebDesignLedger: A more detailed blog covered specific aspects of design; great for touching up on less common techniques or general element incorporation.
- I Love Typography: Very active blog for those who love typography and want to know more, see more, use it more.
- Six Revisions: Crazy useful site for general web design practices, with plenty of freebies and inspirational pieces to get you thinking.
- Design Meltdown: Quite likely the most well organized design inspiration collection out there, full of useful content in both contemporary and classic categories.
- Fuel Your Creativity: All about design, including inspiration, news, tips, freebies and tools.
- Typographica: Everything you ever wanted to know about typography and some of the best visual typography out there.
- DzineBlog: These guys put out great articles, sprinkled with helpful tips and inspiration.
- You The Designer: A graphic design blog that posts the latest in what's hot in design news, with plenty of freebies and sorting capabilities.
- Noupe: From Smashing Magazine, Noupe has some of the classiest inspiration around the web--including their own site.
- Smashing Magazine: Speaking of which, one of the most well-known design blogs is acclaimed for a reason.
- Flickr: Well known for photography, but also an excellent resource for web design.
- Drawar: "The Imagination Community" is definitely worth a look.
There you go. Have any questions about design? Need to know a specific trick? Drop us a line in the comments and we'll see if we can help out!
