Inspiration - Page 58

Beautiful, inspiring examples of graphic design, mockups, presentation templates, websites, fonts, icons, and more.

Inspiration / 1 Aug 2010

Dribbble Shots of the Week #1

I’ve definitely become quite sucked into the strange exclusive designer club that is Dribbble.com. Too often “design inspiration” implies ripping off the entire concept of someone else’s work. With Dribbble it’s really easy to find tiny bits of inspirational art that will spark a design idea where the final result is completely different than the work of the artist who provided the inspiration.

I’ve been so inspired by this bite-sized digital art museum that I decided to start a new series where I will hand pick 10 Dribbble “shots” to share with you. To make the selections, I’ll use no other criteria aside from my own off-the-cuff judgement. As a bonus, I’ll pick a “VIP” each week that showcases my favorite shot and what I liked about it.

So here we go! Please enjoy this week’s top ten shots.

CSS / 15 Jul 2010

30+ Innovative Icon-Based Navigation Menus

Here at Design Shack we love a good navigation menu. Lately we’ve noticed a trend arising around menus that use icons either exclusively in place of text or as a support of additional textual information.

Adding icons to your navigation can not only give you an aesthetic boost but actually make for a quicker visual read of the link. Here’s a collection of over thirty icon-based navigation menus that we found online. We’ll conclude with a few resources you can use to snag some free icons to create your own fancy menus.

Business / 9 Jul 2010

Why Money Shouldn’t Motivate Design

Today we’re going to discuss the difference between designing for money and designing for a living because it’s what you love to do.

We’ll take a look at a few things that motivate designers who couldn’t be anything else if they tried and why design is more than a means to a financial end but is in fact a way of life.

Inspiration / 8 Jul 2010

100 Must Read Design Blogs

In my daily search for design-related content I’ve come across tons of really stellar blogs. Recently I noticed that the list of sites I regularly check in on had far surpassed 100!

I know there’s no shortage of lists like this but I still wanted to share my discoveries with the Design Shack readers. Some of the blogs below are quite famous, others are fairly obscure. Most are specifically about design, others are more for supporting subjects like freelancing or photography. So without further adieu, here’s my list of over 100 must read (or watch for the video sites) design-related websites.

Graphics / 4 Jun 2010

6 Apps for Collecting Digital Inspiration

The online design community is simply overflowing with inspiration. Every day countless blog posts are being published showcasing 30-100 amazing examples of “insert item here.” Further, CSS galleries like our own contain hundreds or even thousands of great site designs.

With all this inspiration being tossed at you all the time, you need a way to catalogue and store it. Today we’ll look at a few tools out there that do exceptionally well at this very thing.

Graphics / 25 May 2010

5 Fantastic Notebooks and Sketchbooks for Designers

This article will briefly examine 5 physical notebooks that are perfectly suited for a number of designer workflows.

Before we get started, let’s take a brief look at some reasons you should be using a notebook as an integral part of your design process.

Graphics / 22 May 2010

Funny Business and the Lack of Humor in Web Design

In a recent post on things that web designers can learn from print designers, I pointed out that professional web design seems awkwardly void of comedy while other forms of marketing seem to embrace it. I decided to explore this area further and make it into full-fledged post.

So today we’re going to look at the world of funny marketing and why you should add it to your arsenal of design tools.

Graphics / 7 May 2010

15 in-Depth Examples of Addictive User Experience

Today we are going to examine 15 bits of user interface and experience design that really heighten the experience of using a site or application.

Use these website, iPhone and desktop application examples as inspiration for creating your own uniquely addicting user experiences.

Inspiration / 27 Apr 2010

7 Lessons Web Designers Can Learn From Print

Looking outside of your area of focus is an excellent way to learn a thing or two about design. Today we’ll see what value thinking like a print designer can bring to your website building skills.

Whether you’ve ever engaged in print design or not, these tips will provide you with some great ideas, ready to be applied to your next design.

Graphics / 22 Apr 2010

40 Amazing Resources for Design Freebies

The web is a veritable wonderland of free design resources that can enrich and improve your designs. This post contains forty sites to bookmark and keep an eye on for a continual stream of amazingly useful resources.

Graphics / 13 Apr 2010

How to Avoid Sticking in a Design Rut

Design ruts are the commercial artist’s equivalent of writer’s block. Sometimes you just seem to reach the end of your creative rope and can’t imagine thinking of any more good ideas.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost in these situations as there is plenty that you can do to both prevent and/or recover from a design rut. Today we’ll look at some different ways your creativity could potentially become stagnant and what to do in response.