As a designer, you’re always looking for inspiration for your projects. It doesn’t matter which CMS you’re using or whether you’re on a WordPress, Joomla or Drupal hosting service. The right ideas can really set the spark and bring your project to life. That’s why we’re always looking for great design blogs to share with our audience.
Here are the top eight that we think you should check out if you need a good dose of inspiration.
Smashing Magazine is one of the most well known design blogs online. Although we look at other blogs, we always end up coming back to their site for more. While there is a lot of great content for web and graphic design, there are so many other topics that the blog network covers. This includes everything from mobile site design, app design, UX design, typography and even coding. You’ll find a good balance of helpful articles, tutorials, news and real examples to learn from.
Web Designer Depot is a one-stop shop for all things related to web design. You’ll regularly find inspirational posts, case studies and design examples to help you generate new ideas. What we like about Web Designer Depot is the fact that the website integrates digital marketing into the mix. It covers topics like eCommerce, conversion rate optimization, mobile marketing and email marketing. This information is important to designers as many clients will appreciate their designer having at least a general knowledge about what they’re working on.
Creative Bloq is a blog that offers a lot of great content spanning many different areas of design. The list includes web design, graphic design, logo design, illustrations and even paintings. There are many helpful tutorials for tools like InDesign, Photoshop, Maya, and more. Creative Bloq is always about bringing you the latest news, trends and techniques in the design world. If you want to stay ahead of the curve as a designer, you’ll want to bookmark or follow this blog.
This blog is very simply designed and visually driven which is always a big plus for designers. They featured a lot of content for freelancers which is perfect if you’re looking to land more clients or grow your business. What we really like about 1st Web Designer is the fact that they’re always posting helpful resources. Sometimes the best way to get a project started is to start out with some solid templates. You’ll find that and more from this blog. There are also many resources for CMS platforms, which will really help if you’re using a WordPress, Joomla or Drupal hosting service.
5. Design Week
Design Week was the UK’s leading design magazine and went fully digital a few years ago. The magazine covers a wide variety of subjects like branding, furniture, product, print and packaging design. If you’re stuck and can’t seem to come up with a strong idea, it often helps to look outside the design formats you typically work on. For example, you’ll get find yourself coming up with ideas for your web design projects after going though some packaging design examples.
6. Trend List
It’s important to remember that the design world spans multiple countries, industries and formats. If you’re looking for really looking for unique designs, Trend List is the blog to visit. They source design examples from all over the world. You’ll find many popular designs coming from Brazil, Hungary, South Korea, Germany, France and even Turkey. The best part is that everything is neatly organized into categories so that you can search by the type of design, country of origin, and even the name of the studio/designer responsible.
Creative Review stands out from other design blogs because it explores the creative process. They have a section that breaks down and analyzes creative projects. They have a section that helps you understand the creative process and the thinking of other designers. They also have a section to help inspire you. They collect unique and groundbreaking design examples from topics like photography, illustrations, animations, architecture and print.
Format Magazine focuses a lot of their content on illustrations, media (videos, animations, animated GIFs) and photography. If you’re looking for tips for getting the perfect shot or need some help using the right photos for your websites, Format Magazine is the perfect blog to visit. Even if your strictly about digital design, you’ll find that a lot of the illustrations examples on the blog will help you come up with new approaches to your project.
We chose these eight blogs because they all offer something unique whether it’s the content, inspirational examples, tutorials, news or editorials. But don’t let this small collection of blogs stop you from discovering what else is out there. There are many other high quality blogs that are publishing outstanding content for all types of designers from web designers, animators, photographers, to videographers. At the end of the day, you want to follow blogs that publish content that is relevant and valuable to you as a designer.