Found inspiration

A key element in my creative process is being aware of what is possible. Some of this comes from experimentation or re-working elements of previous projects, but just as important is seeing what everyone else is doing. It's always a great inspiration to me to see other people doing great stuff. It encourages me to raise my game and new ideas get incorporated on all sorts of levels.

This is my top list of sites that I watch for inspiration (in no particular order):

1. www.styleboost.com - One of the best sites I know of that lists the best-of-the-best websites from a design and interaction perspective.

2. www.newwebpick.com - A great design portal that both indexes great websites but also sells (at a very reasonable subscription) a great Flash based magazine - and they also give away a free version that has about 20% of the content from the full version. Well worth a look!

3. www.conceptart.org - This is an all time-favourite of mine and is the home of some amazing resident artists as well as a busy forum that covers both 2D and 3D, digital and analogue artwork. It's a great place to see a lot of amazing work, get help and feedback.

4. www.juxtapoz.com - An interesting selection of works from modern artists. Always a lot going on and covers a good range styles. Covers launches and gallery shows.

5. www.plasticandplush.com - Like toys? Like character design? I love this site, it's an amazing source of fun inspiration.

6. www.eatpoo.com - One of my long standing favourites amongst the main art forums, because of the high standard of the artwork that gets posted here and the quality of the people that make up it's uses. Much more focused to 2D artwork than 3D.


There are a few more sites that should also get a mention just for being so cool or useful:

1. peaceloveandhappiness.org - A really great site 'free software for art, music and personal creativity'. You will find things like fonts and images in this site as well. Very useful!

2. www.morguefile.com - A great source of community generated hi-rez photography, most of which is free to download and use, as long as you check the licence for each image and credit where necessary.

3. www.pdf-mags.com - If you are stuck for something fresh to read, this is a great place to look - lists all the latest released PDF magazines. Very handy.

4. www.colourlovers.com - Sometimes the thing that I get stuck on is designing colour palettes and colourlovers is a site dedicated to just that - great colour palettes. Very useful, well worth a visit. An the palettes can be downloaded as a variety of formats including photoshop palette files.

5. www.tokyoplastic.com - This site has been around for a while and is just stunning. The best example of content = interface = brand that I have found.


Alan