A few weeks ago we published a list of 34 places to get design inspiration online and off and it proved to be one of our most popular articles to date. So today we journey back out to the world of design inspiration to bring you many, many more places to get inspiration – 60 to be precise.
I have literally been combing the web and have unearthed so many great sites and places that I’d never seen. From advertising to architecture, graphics to web, art to design, there’s a bit of everything. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed finding them and that they inspire some of the great works of tomorrow!
39 websites packed with inspiration…
Desktopography
If you’re going to spend all day at your desk, you should have an inspirational wallpaper to blow your mind every time you close a window. Desktopography features some of the most visually stunning wallpapers around – all based on nature themes so that you can fool you eyes into thinking you’ve been outdoors sometime this month.
The Ad Generator
Out of all the sites listed here, this is probably the most innovative. By pairing up words set in semantic structures taken from real slogans with related images piped through from Flickr, the Ad Generator is disturbingly good at generating clever little adverts. Made as a Masters Thesis project, I can only hope that Alexis Lloyd (the site’s creator) absolutely dominated his course that year.
FaveUp
FaveUp is a site that pares back to the very simplest of galleries, showcasing logos, business cards, CSS websites and Flash sites all in the same place. The site only launched last week but already has some 250 entries on it.
New Web Pick
Part Magazine, part web portal, all inspirational goodness. NWP with it’s super little logo is an oldie but goodie of design portals.
StyleBoost
Not everyone ‘gets’ Styleboost and certainly it isn’t your run of the mill inspiration gallery/blog, but thanks to Johan’s adept steering of the site since way back in 2001, the gallery has flowered into one of the best and brightest showcases around.
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You might be thinking what is iStockPhoto doing in this list, and though perhaps browsing stock photos could be a source of inspiration, rather I’ve included iStock for it’s rather useful Designer Spotlight. The gallery is categorized up into everything from Advertising to Annual Reports, Product Packaging to Television. Some of the design isn’t exactly crash hot, but there’s some good stuff mixed in there and a few of the categories I know of no other place to find examples of.
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You might be thinking what is iStockPhoto doing in this list, and though perhaps browsing stock photos could be a source of inspiration, rather I’ve included iStock for it’s rather useful Designer Spotlight. The gallery is categorized up into everything from Advertising to Annual Reports, Product Packaging to Television. Some of the design isn’t exactly crash hot, but there’s some good stuff mixed in there and a few of the categories I know of no other place to find examples of.
Ventillate
This is one slick blog/gallery/link hub, built by Canadians with superior design taste, you’ll know you’re getting only top quality filtered goodies.
DesignFCKR’s List of Flickr Photo Pools
While DFCKR probably deserves to be in this list in it’s own right, I was actually more interested in this super list of 28 Flickr Photo pools as there is some really great stuff in there.
PhireBrush
Can you say gorgeous? Because that’s what you’ll be getting at Phirebrush which these days is getting to be a veritable inspiration institution. With some spectacular digital art that will blow your socks right off, you’ll love Phirebrush.
UrbanFonts
You know those moments when you see a font and it just makes you want to design something to use it, well with UrbanFonts you can browse a huge collection of free fonts to do just that. While I do enjoy paying for a good font now and then, I just can’t help myself when it’s FREE, FREE, FREE
TextureKing
Literally hundreds of textures freely available – from the dirty to the elegant, there is sure to be a pattern to grace your next design.
Veer’s Wallpaper Collection
I only learnt about Veer recently, but I must say they’re pretty cool and they seem to have been around for ages. The Veer Wallpaper gallery spans five years of designs and includes something for everyone.
IconBase
Icons that will make your drool. And what’s more, there are pages and pages and pages of them. And if that wasn’t enough, they are free for personal and non-comercial use… Yay!
MoreInspiration
If your flavour of design happens to be product, then you are going to love MoreInspiration, a site hosting some thousand plus innovative ideas and products.
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Saying no to a potential client is difficult to do, especially when you’re first starting out, or the economy has brought the stream of new business to a halt. But saying no can actually improve your situation in some cases, by freeing up time, creativity and not putting yourself in a difficult situation later.
Here is his list of 12 times you should say no to a client:
- They expect you to drop what you’re doing and meet with them today
- They ask for a discount right away
- They balk at paying a deposit to get the work started
- They balk at signing a contract
- They want to change several terms of your tried-and-true contract
- They can’t give you a clear idea of what they want (“Just start!”)
- They want to pay next to nothing, with the promise of some big jobs in
the future (the oldest trick in the book?) - There is no point person (so they will be reviewing the work by
committee) - They have no offices or at least appearance of stability
- They have a track record of going through designers like crazy (and
the old designers were always at fault) - There doesn’t seem to be much respect for your expertise
- Your gut reaction is that something’s just not right (trust your
instinct and bolt for the door)
In my experience, #6 is the most deadly. You accept a job and everything appears on the up-and-up. The client is looking for something completely fresh, so has no restrictions or thoughts on what the piece of work should look like. You end up spending countless hours coming up with multiple concepts only to find out that they had something very specific in mind, and quite frankly, it sucks!
Can I just pay the whole amount when it’s done? No.