Hey Designer, get inspired!
Opening a new tab in your browser is a generic experience, but who wants generic? In our studio, we love to be inspired, so we’ve chosen four ‘new tab’ extensions that will stir your creative juices and motivate you.
And you need these, after all - we’re all creative in some way and we need inspiration from a variety of sources and not just from the bottom of a coffee cup.
If you want to be energised, inspired, motivated and engaged, then look no further, one of these extensions will meet your needs!
1. Panda
Panda is a roundup of inspirational websites such as Dribbble, Ffffound, Awwwards and Pttrns, as well as others that don’t overdo the consonants.
Not only does it show you beautiful pictures to snap your creative thinking like an elastic band, but it shows articles and news from all corners of the industry.
There’s also a bookmarking feature to save articles and inspiration into your Panda account. Great when you spy something perfect for your current project.
Furthermore, it opens up the ‘big guns’ sites such as SwissMiss and TechCrunch into your Panda window. Less tabs, less noise, less friction, more time for that delicious coffee…
2. Palettab
From the guys who created COLOURlovers, an international online community of over 4 million amateurs making expert colour palettes, Palettab is a partnership of fonts and colours.
Each of the five colours will work together as a sequence and you can select the sequence, a single colour or a font.
Using Google fonts makes life super easy for designers and I’ve had no end of hovering colleagues asking about this extension.
3. Momentum
This charming extension remained on my laptop for many seasons. With perfectly curated photography and personalised messages it made every new tab a joy.
Momentum has a to do list section which I found super helpful, even when my colleagues entered ‘buy cakes for office’ and ‘get back to work’ in an amusing attempt to throw me off course.
It also has quotes, localised weather and a link to the photograph displayed.
Beautiful, calm and inspiring.
4. Dribbble
As a massive Dribble fan I was really excited by this extension and quite rightly so.
The extension has a more stylistic design than the actual site, although none of the functionality. This extension breathes life into the gifs that are static on Dribbble make for a lively, engaging page.
Being able to see your ‘likes’ is fantastic for when you’re researching your next project or showing your client the interaction or animation style you are hoping to achieve.
So off you go creative types, find your inspiration from one of these extensions, or install each of these extensions on all of your devices!
There are thousands of great extensions out there so please feel free to comment or tweet us here @furthermore_ux with any suggestions.
Eloise is a Senior Designer at Furthermore. Follow us on Twitter @Furthermore_ux for insights like this and more.
