Curtis Henson

Getting inspiration for design can sometimes be challenging. It is easy to go to your favorite CSS gallery or design site and get some ideas, but more often than not this leads to boring designs. Sometimes getting a fresh creative idea takes some digging in some unusual dirt.

Art

This one is obvious for illustrators, but web designers usually skip it. Art can inspire many things: colors, textures, rhythm, layout, or just get you in a creative mood. Art gets me in a drawing mood, which leads to lots of doodles and fresher designs…plus its fun.

• Concept Art Forum - The king daddy of concept art sites, conceptart.org has a huge amount of art on tap, and it is always fresh. Don’t skip the forum as it is the meat and potatoes of the site.
• Old Books - I’m not sure this falls under art but might need a section all of it’s own. The link leads to a copy of The Usborne Book of the Future which should not only be entertaining but give you some good ideas…this particular book also contains several examples of what not to do so be careful what it inspires you to do.
• Colour Lovers - Colour Lovers can be a great source of inspiration, and that is what they are there for. So thats that…go get some colors.
• Boonika - I’m not really sure how to describe boonika. It is a blog, with art and stuff that is art like. I suggest you check it out for yourself.
• Artists - There are more artists than I could ever mention with sites full of inspiring works, so I’ll list a couple random ones. MyDeadPony, Hugh Ferriss, Valp’Nietylko, James Paick, Signal Noise

Photography

Photography is great to look at, but its also great to get out and actually take pictures to inspire yourself. I’m always amazed at how things look through the viewfinder.

• Strobist - While not really a site for inspiration so much as improving your technical skills, it is more than worth a mention here. If you want to improve your photography for any reason, this is one of the best resources you could ever ask for.
• Flickr - Duh.
• Chase Jarvis - Great photographer and you will probably recognize his work. Not only are his photos great for inspiration but his videos rock.
• DIY Photography - Again a more technical site(see a theme, go outside!).

Interior Designs

This isn’t HGTV this is computers, this is digital, and I’m not to keen on parades! Nay I say(cause it rhymes) interior design can definitley be used as inpiration. The colors, shapes, patterns, practically everything from interior design can be moved over to the digital world…even furniture.

• Flickr - Again? Yes Flickr again, this time a pool of only interior designs.
• Harmonie Interieure - Some pretty slick vinyl wall decorations, and the site design is right up my alley. I also think they did a pretty good job of integrating both French and English into the site, not an easy thing to do.
• Industrial Decay - Totally edgy and grunge type interior designs, these take years sometimes decades to create! Ok, so I don’t really know that many good interior design sites, but nonetheless it is an awesome blog.

Illustrations

• Drawn! - The blog about illustration. More inspiration than you can shake a stick at!
• I Want Your Skull - Not for everyone, actually it is pretty specific…If you want to see cool skull stuff, check this site out. If you don’t want to see cool skull stuff, don’t go to this site(why wouldn’t you?).
• Layer Tennis - You can check out the archives right now, some great stuff in a very short amount of time.
• Go Mediazine - The blog from the folks that bring you the coolest vectors. Tutorials tips and all sorts of stuff to give you wicked ideas.
• Animation Backgrounds - Remember all those corny Disney movies? Well if you can look past the lame plots the backgrounds are really beautiful.
• Cereal Killers - What’s cooler than cereal? Cereal that can kill you! But ceriously this blog has some wicked cereal box art.

The I’m Too Lazy To Look Through All That Stuff

I realize some people think that list looks more like work, so for you I have one link.

• FFFFound! - Thats four f’s. FFFFound is a horde of cool stuff people bookmark. A quick glance at the front page will probably give you ideas for a week.

So ditch your CSS gallery and check out some other inspiration sources, you never know what you might come up with.