10 Best Sources for Digital and Web Design Inspiration

The ever evolving world of design is becoming increasingly digital. This is not news. But it makes us super excited because we love getting inspired by new stuff that pushes us to be better designers, digital or not. While there are a lot of sources for inspiration out there, these are great places to start and some of our faves.

No order is the best order, so;

MUZLI

If you haven’t installed this Chrome extension, you’re missing out. It brings together top inspiration from favourites like Dribbble, Behance and Medium, or you can filter by your prefered source. Show off how in the know you are by tweeting directly from the dashboard, or get lost in a black hole clicking through to check out the amazing projects being showcased.

SITE INSPIRE

Curated by Howells Studio, siteInspire is a showcase of the finest web and interactive design. You can browse the collection by style, type, subject, platform or their pick of the best. The website itself is clean and easy to use, with big-ish thumbnails of the websites — enough to give you a decent preview. This is a great site if you’ve got a specific project and want to check out what other people are doing, plus the versatility of the sites featured means your inspiration could come from left field.

HTTPSTER

HTTPSTER describe themselves as a “curated showcase of shit-hot web design with a less-is-more bent”. Boom. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Search by tags split into type or style, or just browse the awesome collection.

WEB DESIGNER DEPOT

WebdesignerDepot (WDD) is a one-stop website for all digital designers. You’ll find the latest in tips and techniques, as well as freebies and discounts on software, fonts, icons etc. The articles are quite in depth, and cover stuff like coding languages and styles, usability, responsive design and mobile applications. They even delve into the business side of things like freelancing and growing your business. If it’s related to design, it’s at the WDD.

CSS TRICKS

If you can look past it’s name, CSS-Tricks is more than just CSS — it’s a site full of web design/development goodness. The blog has a wealth of articles, there are a bunch of videos and tutorials (check out The Lodge on there), and there’s even a podcast. Also, Snippets; a collection of screenshots of quick code fixes across HTML, CSS, Sass, htaccess, JavaScript, jQuery, WordPress, and PHP.

PATTERN TAP

Zurb is a product design company, and PatternTap is their library of cool websites and responsive design, searchable by style, colour, type or device. Other useful bits and pieces on here include a collection of bite-size facts about users (eg. putting a hamburger icon inside a button increases use by 22.4%**), triggers (UX motivators), and building blocks (bits of code for basic website elements).

**We’re not saying it’s true, but we’re hungry now.

DEPTH CORE

Digital art heaven, or Depthcore, is a collective of modern digital art, spanning illustration, photography and animation. Contributed to by artists all over the world, this site is a passion project in art and innovation. The gallery is presented in Chapters, which are set themes that artists submit contributions too. Our favourite things to do is browse the artist directory — there are also interviews here. The seriously talented work here is top notch inspiration.

UNMATCHED STYLE

Unmatched Style isn’t the cleanest website to look at or use, but it redeems itself with a good mix of top-quality featured websites, a bunch of articles and even five different design/development related podcasts. Radar is another standout feature: every week a collection of links to cool industry stuff is posted.

BWG

Formerly Make Better Websites, Best Website Gallery (or BWG) is a beautiful collection of full screen websites. They featured a site of the day which is fun, and an archive to dig back through. Although not updated as frequently as the others, there is some excellent quality on here.

HOVER STATES

Hover States is a treasure trove of web and digital inspiration, for designers and developers alike. The curators (from London studio Animade) believe the beauty of digital design is movement and behaviour, and this appreciation is clear in the featured content. There is also an interview section for getting to know more about the makers of the websites showcased.

There you have it — digital designer inspiration for days. To learn how to create great design work that inspires other designers, check out our courses page.