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Jennifer's Web Design / HTML Blog

By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com Guide to Web Design / HTML since 1997

Where do you find design inspiration?

Thursday November 6, 2008
I was in the bookstore the other day and found a book that purported to be a book for Web design inspiration. I ended up not buying it because it was shrink-wrapped so I couldn't even look at the pages to see if it really would inspire me. And it cost a lot. :-) When I'm working on general projects (like templates or layouts) I find a lot of inspiration from other Web designers. In fact, that's why I created the Web Design Design Gallery - to give myself and others a source of inspiration for Web designs. But I don't think that looking at other websites should be my only, or even my best, source of inspiration. When I'm working on a specific project, I try to find inspiration from the topic of the site. For example, if I were building a site about horses, I would go look at horses, take photos of horses, and make a site that reminded me of horses. If it were a site about pregnancy, I'd surround myself with that instead. I like designs that come out of the function that they're trying to get across - not just that copy every other website out there.

Comments

November 6, 2008 at 5:13 pm
(1) Alexander says:

With other’s sites I manage to get inspirations… but when I have to make myself a portfolio site.. Nothing comes to my head! Ever! I tried for so much time to get a decent idea about it, and I haven’t approved any (of my ideas) yet…
Otherwise there is always something to grab on to - even the logo or the institution’s building (if it is something out of the ordinary, that is). Or as a last resort you could imagine… let’s say the website as an extremely abstract portrait of “the boss” (so abstract nobody would recognize; though I haven’t done this so far, it’s just an idea that came to me now…)

November 6, 2008 at 6:57 pm
(2) Cassius Zedaker says:

My inspirations chiefly come from — dum dum dum — the blank page itself. REALLY!
I just sit down to work on what I need to do, and somehow or other, with enough hacking at it, the thing just … comes out, ya know?

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