11 Brilliant Sources Of Design Inspiration (updated for 2020)

Ugh…Design Inspiration...

You’re staring at a blank Photoshop file, “Untitled 1.” You draw some shapes, add some mismatched colors, but nothing is feeling right. We’ve all been there before.

Pour yourself a cup of coffee and browse these sources of inspiration to get back on your A-game.

11 Brilliant Sources Of Design Inspiration

1. Dribbble

If your inspiration doesn’t come from nature, it’ll probably come from another designer. Dribbble is a community of professional designers showing off what they’re working on. You can view different buckets related to what you’re working on, or simply browse randomly seeking inspiration from any graphic that may tickle your fancy.

Dribbble also has a great color search feature. You can start with a color from your own design and then develop a palette based on what other people are doing with the color.

2. Behance

Behance is a social media platform owned by Adobe which aims ‘to showcase and discover creative work’. That being said, reading other designers’ thoughts on their own work and seeing what other people have to say will help you improve your craft and give you new ideas.

3. One Minute With

This source may not give you new ideas, but it will certainly help inspire you as a designer.

One Minute With is an interview-based site where successful designers answer questions about their lives, careers, and projects. To quote the site, “[One Minute With is] a collection of great interviews with great designers, developers, illustrators, and creatives.”

Hopefully, after reading a few interviews you’ll be reinvigorated with the energy to create something awesome!

4. Coffitivity

Coffitivity is a site that simply gives you the background ambiance of a coffee shop. Apparently, the blend of sounds and chatter from coffee shops can help to inspire creativity. Try running it behind your music while you’re working on your next project or searching for inspiration somewhere.

5. Go Outside

Let’s think outside the box this time. No matter where you live, the suburbs, a city, or the middle of nowhere, there is an infinite amount of inspiration in the world around you.

Install Adobe Capture on your phone, and go for a walk. Getting away from the computer will help you ‘think outside the screen’ and get your mind going. If anything you see catches your eye, whether it be a sign for a musky dive bar, a beautiful flower, or a neighbor’s wacky mailbox, pull out our phone and capture it for later. Take a picture, and then use Adobe Capture to create a color palette to use later.

6. Pinterest

Pinterest is better known for its fashion and food categories, but there is a design category as well. There’s a huge variety of content and the infinite scrolling nature of Pinterest makes it a fun and easy way to take in a whole lot of inspiration all at once.

7. Muzli

Muzli by InVision mines leading web sources like Dribbble, Behance, Designspiration, ffffound, Mashable, Techcrunch and over 150 other, Muzli combines automated curation with human discovery, to uncover the best design inspiration and news that you won’t find with a web search.

8. Threadless

Threadless is a community originally based around T-shirt design. Designers submit their work and compete with each other to win contests and get their shirts approved.

You don’t need to be making tees to appreciate the talent and style of the many designers submitting new Tees to Threadless. What makes it a great source of inspiration is the huge diversity of style due to a large number of people participating.

9. Awwwards

Awwwards.com strives to find and award the best designers, developers, and agencies in the world. The sites showcased are works of art. If you need to get inspired, these are probably the websites that will do it for you.

The ‘Sites of the Day‘ section is a good browse to keep up with what cutting-edge web design looks like these days.

10. Around Your House

Everything in your house was designed by someone. Looking at web design may be more relevant to your field, but there are probably countless products around your own house that you could get your creative juices flowing. You may find inspiration in the curvature of glass or the sleek contemporary appearance of your dishwasher.

11. TED Talks

In case you didn’t know, the “D” in “TED” stands for design. There’s a great design category on the TED website with a wide range of design-oriented talks. Most of the talks are outside-the-box and incredibly thought-provoking.

If you want to take things to the next level, put on a TED talk on your phone, put in your headphones, and go for a walk. Escape for a while and let your creative juices flow.

Equipped with this list of inspirational havens, you should have no problem coming up with new ideas and taking your design to the next level.

Need more content to improve your creativity? Take a look at Simple Techniques To Improve Your Creativity And Designs.