Most designers through the years in the industry have spent hours looking through many different websites for design inspirations. Eventually, through the years you end up with your favourite sites for specific design inspirations. Here are my five favourite web design inspiration sources.
1. Abduzeedo
I have been using this site since a classmate told me about it during my college days (almost 8 years ago). Abduzeedo was created by Fabio Sasso a Google designer in 2006. Aside from web design inspirations the site also offers graphic design inspirations, photography, UX, tutorials, tools review, architecture and the latest news in the industry.
You can also submit your design at their subsite RAWZ for a chance to be featured in Abduzeedo.
2. CSS Design Awards
If you are looking for websites inspirations that are innovative creative, functional this is the site for you. The site awards websites from freelancers, agencies and studios in different industry categories and chooses a winner daily, monthly and yearly. It is quite an honour to be awarded as winners are chosen by leading designers from all over the world and by the community.
3. Website Design Ledger (WDL)
Similar to abduzeedo this is one of the first sites I have ever used for finding web design inspiration. WDL is a blog dedicated to publishing web design related content. Articles consist of news, design inspirations, code practices, etc. The website has changed many times over the years I have been visiting it and further improving. However, lately, there seem to be some UX issues as ads and banners are getting in the way of the content.
4. Awwards
This is a similar to CSS Design Awards which is a collection of web design inspiration that pushes design to its boundaries. The site awards users and critiques them on the design based on design, usability, creativity and content. The founders wanted to make a meeting point for designers where they can share their work and get constructive feedback from each other.
5. Pinterest
Yes, Pinterest does have more than cakes, wedding photos and food pictures. Type in the right search words you will see a pretty good collection of website design. Be specific on your search if you are after a specific category of web design. Aside from web design, you can find graphic design, UI, UX, illustrations and infographic inspirations on the site as well.
These are my five favourite sites to visit. Hopefully, this can help you get started when looking for web design inspiration. Make sure to find your own and share it with me if you can.