Design Inspiration Toolbox: 100 Sources of Design Inspiration
By Steven Snell | Published January 13th, 2009 in InspirationWeb and graphic designers are always looking for excellent sources of inspiration. Of course, web design and CSS galleries are common sources, but there are countless websites that provide inspiration from other types of design. In this post you’ll find categories such as product design, architecture, fashion, illustration, logo design, typography, motion graphics, and more.
With a list of this size I’m sure you’ll find some new sources of inspiration that you weren’t previously familiar with. Of course, no one can keep up with all of these choices, so find the ones that work best for you and keep the others bookmarked for the future.
UPDATE: We recently launched 5 niche gallery sites of our own:
- CartFrenzy – E-commerce design inspiration
- TypeInspire – Typography inspiration
- Blog Design Heroes – Blog design inspiration
- Minimal Exhibit – Minimalist design inspiration
- Folio Focus – Portfolio inspiration
Web Design Galleries:
Most readers of this blog are well aware of design and CSS galleries,so rather than listing 100 of them, I’ll point out a few of my favorites and some that I think are unique in one way or another.
An awesome source of inspiration that categorizes the featured sites by the type of inspiration, such as comment design, 404 pages, e-commerce websites, login forms, and much more. The categorization makes the site unique and immensely useful.
Quality over quantity. Nick La’s Gallery is the highest quality, in my opinion. New sites are featured regularly, although there are not as many sites posted as compared to many other galleries.
Quantity over quality. CSS Mania features several new sites each day, although some of the sites featured are not as high quality as others. It’s a great place to go if you want to find lots of sites to look at.
We Love WP is a showcase of websites and blogs powered by WordPress.
Showcasing snippets of great design, Design Snips is similar to Pattern Tap with it’s categorization. Some of the categories include banners, buttons, backgrounds, etc.
Inspiration from flash-based sites. A new site is posted each day.
If you’re looking to save some time browsing various galleries, Most Inspired is an aggregator that showcases the sites featured in many different galleries.
A web design gallery with a different feel.
Image/Photo Sharing and Bookmarking:
Sharing and bookmarking images is a great way to keep track of your favorite inspirational sources, and you can also browse through the items uploaded or bookmarked by other users.
An invitation-only image bookmarking service. The images bookmarked by users are showcased for the inspiration of the rest of us.
Design Your Trust is not exactly like the other sites featured in this section, but it’s a site/blog where users can register and share images.
Excellent Flickr groups for inspiration:
Graphic Design Showcases:
The sites listed in this category are all a little bit different from one another, but each one provides inspirational pieces of graphic design in various forms.
Graphic-ExchanGE showcases different projects of graphic design. If you browse through the site you’re sure to find plenty of inspiration.
Graphic design, typography, grid systems, minimalism and modernism.
Featuring vector art from a variety of different designers.
Portfolios:
There are a number of different websites where you can post your own design portfolio to be shared with other users. Of course, all of these portfolios also serve as excellent sources of design inspiration.
Publications:
The galleries at SPD.org showcase award winning designs.
A huge collection of free PDF magazines.
Showcasing newspaper design.
Advertising Inspiration:
Ads can often be an excellent source of inspiration. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much in this area, so if you know of other sites please share in the comments.
Typography:
Typography is an important part of many different kinds of design. These sites showcase exceptional examples of typography that can inspire you in your own work.
From the Behance Network.
A niche web design gallery that focuses on sites with outstanding typography.
Product Design:
Product design from around the world can be both inspirational and amusing. Product design can be one of the most creative fields of design.
One of the best sources of product design inspiration with frequent posts.
From the NOTEMPIRE.
Also from the NOTEMPIRE.
Design in drinks.
Home and product design.
The latest products and trends.
A small gallery of Japanese product design.
Motion Graphics:
Warning: You may find yourself spending a lot of time watching these.
From the Behance Network.
Logo Design:
Logo designers have a number of sites specifically dedicated to logo design inspiration.
Illustration:
Illustration is a favorite of many designers and artists. These five sites specialize in showcasing excellent works of illustration.
Multi-Purpose Galleries:
The sites listed in this category are galleries that showcase more than just one type of design.
Logos, business cards and websites.
Abstract, characters, concept art, architecture, nature, sci-fi, and more.
Websites, illustration, vector art, photo manipulation, and more.
Posters and Album Covers:
The music and movie industry provide plenty of design inspiration in terms of posters and album covers.
The best site for finding gig posters from bands of all kinds.
A gallery of album covers.
Movie posters of all kinds.
Regular postings of movie posters.
Book Design:
Books design gets less attention than many other types of design, but can be equally inspirational.
A blog focusing on book design.
“Judging books by their covers.”
Architecture and Interior/Home Design:
There are a number of sites that provide great inspiration from architecture and interior design. These are the best that I found, although I can’t claim to be very familiar with any of them.
Fashion:
There are probably many other excellent websites for fashion design inspiration, it’s just not an area of design that I’m very familiar with.
From the Behance Network.
Fashion and a lot more.
From the NOTEMPIRE.
Industrial Design:
If you’re looking for design inspiration but tired of browsing through web design galleries, industrial design can be another excellent source.
From the Behance Network.
Tons and tons of inspiration in the archives of this Technorati Top 100 blog.
Art:
The sites listed in this section display different types of artwork and/or photography.
Click for Art is an art marketplace. You don’t have to buy anything to be inspired by the work that’s available here.
Different chapters are posted every few months that feature work from various artists.
From the Behance Network.
Various:
These sites are difficult to categorize, in most cases because they provide inspiration that could fit into multiple categories.
Art, architecture, furniture, technology, and more.
Illustration, photography, industrial design, and more.
Art, animation, illustration, advertising, architecture, and more.
Photography, graphic art, illustration, print design, and more.
Black and white design of all kinds.
Architecture, art, fashion, and more.
Photography, graphic design, and more.
A wide variety of all things creative.
Photography, graphic design, technology, and more.
Art, photography, and fashion.
Art, design, culture, and technology.
Design and technology.
What are your favorite sources of design inspiration?
I know everyone has their own favorites, see feel free to list yours in the comments.
I collect screenshots of inspirational web designs in my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/sr-ps. I will often direct clients to it to get a feel for mood and styles that resonate with them, and the message they convey.
Wow, this list is just great! You can completely forget the time when you start to browse. Thank you for sharing!
I just launched a blog at http://patterrific.com.
Patterrific provides free seamless repeat patterns in both vector and pixel format to designers around the world. As it’s new it’s still small but I try to post new patterns and resources each day. Just have a look, maybe you find something interesting for you.
Fantastic list! For the advertising category, I’d add The Ad Feed = http://www.theadfeed.com, and not just because it’s my site
Holy cow this is an amazing list!!!
Wow, gr8t list, only one thing..I could wish – if the list could be categorized..like Web design inspiration, graphic design inspiration..typography. I appreciate You doing this huge job, just one thing…then I would be really happy.
However, almost every article You do is worth bookmarking!
Very inspiring.. Thank you for the list!
One word!! amazing
Fantastic Resource Steven
This is a fantastic list! Thanks for such a great design inspiration list.
Dainis, it is categorized.
Travis,
Thanks for the additional advertising resource.
I love this list. It will be a great resource for me for a long time. Thank you.
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Great list! Another great website for design/fashion inspiration is http://www.iheartluxe.com
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Mya,
Ahh, I Heart Luxe. I’m familiar with that site but obviously forgot it. Thanks.
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thank you so much! xo
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oh, at first I didn’t saw headers, silly me – I am sorry.
Great list! Thank you!
Another inspiration site to consider adding to the list is FAIRspot.com:
http://www.fairspot.com
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Another logo design inspiration website is http://www.logomoose.com
Awesome post Steven, really expansive list. Thanks for including Blood Sweat Vector =)
thanks for the great list
Great list! I also like this gallery CSS Design Awards Gallery
[...] there are tons of web design galleries out there and plenty of sources of design inspiration online, Card Observer is a rare source that focuses exclusively on business card design. If you have in [...]
[...] there are tons of web design galleries out there and plenty of sources of design inspiration online, Card Observer is a rare source that focuses exclusively on business card design. If you have in [...]
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Great list, thanks.
Could be used as reference for many upcoming design agency and also who are aspiring to become web designer.
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I’m sorry but these posts are really lame and add little value … where’s the reviews of these services? Even a description would be nice.
DangerMouse,
No need to be sorry. I know not everyone will like anything that’s published regardless of what it is. Many of the items do have descriptions and they are all categorized, so it should be pretty self-explanatory what they are. They’re not services.
awesome collection… simply ‘zen’ of design inspiration
Hey , you have a very good blog, its excellent information in its field. You have done a great job, keep doing it for to help, people like Myself.
Awesome design! Hurray for graphic designers, It makes me want to have a site redesign now.
another one cssarena.de
Thank you for information
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Nice collection, thank u for that!
The PDF magazines are brilliant! Thanks for such a wonderful list. I have a few of design of my own. I hope I be in that list someday.
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Thanks for the great inspiration sources!
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is there cssmania the oldest of the all, I find the most beautiful, are the only other clones
These 100 sources are very useful.
WE can use in our development.
Many are down quite a long time ago, but it is a good collection
Great and very inspiring collection…also recommend a logo design gallery http://www.logotalkz.com
Thanks !
I liked Liqurious.com
I’ll go through all collection step by step
Hi!, thanks for putting togheter this awesome list, very good source of inspiration
[...] Design Inspiration Toolbox: 100 Sources of Design Inspiration [...]
This is too much to go over in one day. I’ll bookmark this and look at one a day.
don’t miss http://originideas.com too, it updates daily
Could be used as reference for many upcoming design agency and also who are aspiring to become web designer.
good
Nice list, some of those websites are my daily inspirations