Sophie Shares Her Design Inspirations

For our first WDD of 2023, Scout designer Sophie recommends some incredible design resources that have informed her creative process!

By Elizabeth Cui ft. Sophie Fiks

Hello!

I’m Sophie Fiks, a third-year graphic design major and designer on Scout Conference! This will be my second semester in Scout, but I hope to be a part of it until I graduate. During my time at Northeastern, I’ve worked as a design intern at Itoya and a social media design intern at Allen and Gerritsen.

For this WDD, I’ll be sharing some resources that have inspired me as a designer. I really hope they can be of help to other designers as well — they’ve been so beneficial to my design process!

Designspiration

They have everything! It’s what I use before I go to Pinterest. I feel like Pinterest is very broad and “public” while Designspiration is more niche. Pinterest is also a bit older and more outdated, so Designspiration is a good place to look for more current content.

Dribbble

Dribbble is great for animation, UI/UX and 3D design inspiration. It’s especially helpful for the UX/UI side of design, and they have cool work that ranges from animation to branding to typography. It’s an incredible resource for expanding your interests and learning about all the possibilities within the design realm.

Awwwards

Have you been considering (re)creating your portfolio? In search of inspiration from incredible companies and designers around the globe? Or maybe you’re looking for new ways to animate elements of your personal website for added pizazz? Awwwards houses all styles of websites under the sun and you’re bound to leave the site inspired and ready to create.

There’s so many ideas to spice up your existing portfolio website. The winter break of freshman year was when I made my first portfolio, and this website was super helpful in showing me the endless possibilities for whatever design website I was looking to make.

The Noun Project

This website will make your life much easier. It’s known for royalty free icons you can download and use in your own projects. There’s everything, from the Instagram icon to clocks to pets. All of the icons are entirely editable in Illustrator once downloaded as an SVG. You can also play around with colors, line weight, adding/subtracting elements, etc.

The Noun Project also has royalty-free photographs, but they’re much better known for their icons. Everything is usually free (but they also have a premium account feature!). It’s a really great way to incorporate pre-designed work into your own pieces.

💫 That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!💫