Inspiration.

Being a webdesigner implies coming up with fresh ideas for one’s clients. This is the first challenge the designer has to take and solve. Added to that is the fact that, most of the time, the client has an idea of what s/he wants while not really knowing what s/he actually desires. This is where the webdesigner’s inspiration comes into the game. We will not discuss the problem solving process right now but the way a webdesigner prepares him/herself to readily analyse what the client is longing for and understand the underlying idea.

My own opinion is that the webdesigner should be able to understand the trends and ways of designing and follow them closely for inspiration. New ideas usually crop up while looking at other persons’ work. Sometimes someone else’s idea triggers a new one in one’s mind and the constant nurturing of the idea can end up into a masterpiece. This is where inspiration works at its best. Let’s be clear just right now, we are talking of inspiration and not site ripping or design theft. Moreover, it is important also to build up new experiences from your inspirations and not merely copy an idea and end up being boring.

Webdesigners are quite prolific and have the “bad habit” of being unsatisfied people. The other face of the coin is that, working on one single design usually bores the webdesigner out and new ideas keep floating in, messing with the initial idea. Nearly all webdesigners out there understand these feelings. It is important at this stage to keep up with the initial idea and tamper the least with it and remain focussed. The advantage of this is the large amount of sites, therefore ideas, available online. One of the best ways to use these as inspirational debuts are galleries. There are hundreds of such galleries online and subscribing to their feeds is one of the best presents you can offer to your own self.

Here’s a list of galleries that I really find interesting. Please add yours in the comments:

http://www.mostinspired.com/
http://cssmania.com/
http://www.cssbeauty.com/
http://www.webcreme.com/
http://www.csselite.com/
http://www.cssheaven.com/
http://www.cssbased.com/

The list can go on and on. This is why I put most inspired first which aggregates quite a lot of galleries in one go giving you 24/7 service and inspiration.

Category: Web Design