Best places to find design inspiration for creative people
The creative process can be challenging.
Sometimes, ideas spark instantly. But other times it can take hours to make a one singe design. No one loves creative blocks :(
So if ideas don’t come to your mind right away, it’s useful to step away from your work. You can take a short walk or change your typical workplace. Maybe your brain just needs a bit of switching. Or you might simply need a boost of inspiration!
Here’s a list of my favorite design inspiration websites. They feature design patterns, user flows, email markups and creative solutions of popular companies and great products.
Foundations
Dribbble, Pinterest, Behance — well-known platforms to showcase & discover creative work:
- great places, where designers get inspiration, feedback, community, and jobs worldwide,
- allow you to showcase portfolios of visual work such as graphic design, fashion, illustration, photography, and more.
Or just check Design Hunt — it’s a daily collection of the best products, apps, and inspiration, collected from all major content providers like Designer News, Pinterest, Product Hunt, Dribbble, Fast Co, Designspiration, Abduzeedo, etc.
Muzli Inspiration by InVision — amazing Chrome extension. It combines automated curation with human discovery, to uncover the best design inspiration and news that you won’t find with a web search.
Awwwards — highlights the talent and effort of the best web designers, developers, and agencies in the world:
- evaluates websites based on different factors, including design, usability, content quality, and the creativity of their authors,
- then the best year-round submissions are awarded at their annual conference.
Information boosters
Web Design Museum — a curated gallery of website history. Actually, this collection can be very nostalgic:
- 1200 websites that show us how web design has evolved over time,
- It shows web trends between the years 1994 and 2006.
Httpster — amazing collections of totally rocking websites that will make your computer do a hot-metal. And a special thanks to the timeline sidebar, is how all pagination for inspiration sites should be done.
Hover States — I’m a big fan of that blog. It showcasing the best in alternative digital design. They have fun ideas, not just a good execution of a design.
One Page Love — a collection of unique one-page websites for website design inspiration:
- 30 different categories, from accommodation to sports & 4 design references,
- each review includes a full screenshot of the website design along with noteworthy features.
If you work with mobile…
pttrns — a collection of mobile design patterns, resources, and inspiration for iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Apple Watches, and more. All patterns divided into categories and sorted of dates.
Mobbin — a fantastic collection of the latest mobile design patterns for popular apps:
- explore different apps, such as business, travel or food apps,
- dive into common user flows such as onboarding, social, purchase and more.
Mobile Patterns — one more design inspirational library worth bookmarking:
- a large collection of mobile UI/UX patterns, categorized and tagged,
- just look at screenshot examples & learn how to do great design like the pros.
UX Archive — collected the most interesting user flows that can help you analyze previous products and learn from others about what works and what doesn’t. Examine tasks such as booking, logging in, onboarding, purchasing, searching, and more.
Even more inspiration
Saas Pages — a collection of the best landing pages with a focus on copywriting and design. Actually, here you can see how other SaaS landing pages were designed, laid out and most importantly their copywriting.
Inspiration UI — here you can find what UI design works well in a showcase inspiration gallery. All designs are organized by patterns such as 404 pages, hovers or testimonials.
ReallyGoodUX — screenshots, and examples of great UX from real mobile and web products. You can discover the best UX examples, including onboarding tours and walkthroughs.
Really Good Emails — one of my favorite collections that don’t let you make boring emails:
- a curated collection of over 4,197 emails, showing off both design & code
- simple and very handy search. There are 7 main categorize, divided into many subsections.
Page Flows — user flow videos and screenshots to inspire you when you’re stuck:
- discover mobile and web design patterns for over 160 different tasks,
- has dozens of great examples of user flow, email flows, and landing pages.
Typewolf — for all those who spend hours trying to find the right font or just love great typography. Actually, it’s a great resource available for everything related to typography on the web.
Thanks for reading!
I hope, here you’ll find lots of incredible ideas for your designs as well. And while using other people’s ideas, be sure to respect them! Please, don’t forget to mention original creators and give credit where you found a source of inspiration.
And what inspires your creativity? Share your tips in the comments and clap 👏 if you enjoyed my article.
