It’s not uncommon to find yourself parched of motivation when creative design is your main assignment for eight hours a day. That’s why we’ve asked the members of our creative team to share a few of their favorite idea-igniting websites to help motivate you, push you, and quench your thirst for new inspiration.
Max Riffner, Creative Director
“I guess if I had to narrow it down to one site, Twitter would be it for me. I have a carefully curated list of folks I follow that range from journalists, writers, designers, and cartoonists. I love seeing what these folks are thinking about in any given moment, even if it is as trivial as what they had for breakfast. Each tweet drives my brain in a different direction, and I’ve happened upon some great solutions to problems by just taking a dive into my Twitter feed.
There’s an old saw about taking a walk when you are faced with a design problem. I find Twitter to be like talking a walk through traffic like Frogger. When you get hyper-focused on 140 characters at a time along with the issue in your head, you can discover something completely new.
Besides that, my list is constantly posting new work all the time. Follow design professors! They always post student work, which I find incredibly inspiring.”
Ariel Sinha, Graphic Designer
“It behooves me to say I’m a big fan of Behance. I love that it integrates a social functionality with the Creative Cloud. Like Dribbble, Behance offers filterable search tools so that I can draw inspiration from other artists around the world, but I like that the Behance environment is more conducive to showcasing detailed projects, rather than just shots. Behance makes adding new work to a portfolio easy for designers by integrating it into the everyday Adobe workflow. I like that it also provides a channel for designers to receive feedback on works-in-progress or finished projects.”
Brandi Slobodnik, Graphic Designer
“Designspiration is the Pinterest of eclectic creative design that markets itself as ‘a resource to help you discover and share great design.’ The platform not only allows you to create your own profile to upload creative work, but also allows you to save categories you’re prone to liking. My favorites are typography, photography, and layout design. While some designers may call the site boho, indie, or hipster, I think it shows a little more insight to a creative brain without limitation.”
Katie Kassel, Graphic Designer
“One of my favorite sites for web design inspiration is Awwwards, a website that recognizes exceptional or innovative website designs (they also hold an annual conference and give awards, hence the name). There are so many sleek, creative sites to draw ideas and inspiration from. Besides the incredible and extensive showcase of work, my favorite part about this site is that you can choose to browse the desktop versions or the mobile versions of each site.
Having the choice to switch between desktop and mobile views is especially helpful when working through wireframes for responsive designs and considering how all of the design elements translate at different sizes. Plus, it gives a really good overview of trends — like hamburger icons, full-screen photos, etc. My brain is buzzing with ideas after paging through this resource.”
Ryan Kholousi, Graphic Designer
“I don’t have one particular website that I visit, but I do subscribe to a couple of weekly email newsletters. My favorite right now is from responsivedesign.is. Every Friday I get an email from them with links to a bunch of articles from all over. I learn new things in both coding and design. The best part is that it’s emailed to me, so I can go back and reference them whenever I need, as opposed to scrolling through my history to find an article I read months ago.”
Blake Wilhelm, UI/UX Developer
“My number one inspiration as a front end developer is always Codrops. They have both experimental user experience tutorials as well as collectives of new trends, information, fonts, icons, libraries, etc. that they put together every week.
All of their tutorials, playground, and blueprints are really good and show you step by step what and how they are doing it. Another site that is really good for the same thing is CodyHouse, but they don’t update as much.”
Jessa Diebel, Website Developer
“I love to go to Typewolf when I’m beginning a web project that has open design parameters. Typography is one of my favorite pieces to play around with when I’m designing a website, and Typewolf collects a lot of great websites that feature unique font combinations, colors, and designs. Typography is something that I love to use whenever possible. It’s SEO friendly — which is a constant goal for us at B² Interactive — and can be used in place of less-than-inspiring stock photos.”
Dan Webb, Software Engineer
“I never studied computer or technology in school, so when I decided I wanted to make a transition to software and web development, I had to teach myself. I utilized the free courses on Codecademy to learn PHP and Javascript and eventually got a job here at B² Interactive. I still go back and have taken courses on Ruby and Angular JS to expand my skill set and knowledge.”
Emily Butz, Video Marketing Strategist
“It’s not so much a website — even though Creative Market is fun to browse — but this email list makes my Monday mornings. Every week at approximately 9:13 a.m., six free downloads magically appear in my inbox: fonts, stock images, HTML and WordPress templates, vectors, icons, UX elements, and the list goes on. The goods come from designers and developers in the CM community, and I love seeing what other people are coming up with.
It’s a nugget of insight into evolving design trends, and it gets me thinking about what I could put together for the community too. I don’t always download everything; it all depends on my current projects or what I think I’d actually make use of (admittedly, quality can be hit or miss sometimes). Creative Market’s “Free Goods of the Week” is one of the very few email lists I don’t regret subscribing to. It’s a shot of creative adrenaline to get my week started right, and I don’t even have to go looking for it. Perfect for a sleepy Monday morning, right?”
Shanley Reynolds, Video Marketing Strategist
“Whenever I need a creative punch to the brain, I tend to check out Daily Dishonesty. It’s a collection of super adorable hand-lettered posters of the little daily lies we tell ourselves. Looking through a few of the different styles or some of the lies usually knocks some new ideas into me. The artist, Lauren Hom, has some really cool work!”
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Hurrdat is a Lincoln, Neb. digital marketing agency specializing in social media and content marketing. The company was founded in 2010 and merged with B² Interactive of Omaha, Neb. in 2014 bringing even more digital marketing specialties to both firms’ clients. Together they provide a full range of social media, SEO, and website development services to both national brands and local clients. The companies employ more than 75 people in Nebraska and have won multiple awards for their business efforts, company culture, and clients’ campaigns.
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