Whether you are a student who wants to share her projects and passion, a freelancer trying to showcase her works, or an entrepreneur setting up a startup, you are presumably creating a website. Again, you could be creating your own website, choosing a ready-made design template or hiring a professional team. In any case, having a basic understanding of web design is a plus. Surveying good web designs and practices can help you cultivate ideas on what a good web design consists of. You can create your own personal list of references to get inspired and communicate what you need.
In this article, I am making a list of curated galleries, design magazines and designer community websites that can be helpful when you need inspirations for web design.
Award Websites and Curated Galleries
There are websites and communities dedicated to awarding best designs on the web where they select winning designs by a jury comprised of design professionals.
Webby Awards, called ‘The Oscars of the Internet’, chooses winners on various web design categories such as best homepage design and best navigation. It is announced annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences jury.
Awwwards chooses winners as ‘Sites of the Day’, ‘Sites of the Month’ and ‘Sites of the Year’ based on the votes of an international jury panel and the website community.
The Favorite Website Awards (FWA) gives out daily, monthly and yearly awards to the most cutting-edge and innovative designs.
Other Award Websites: cssdesignawards ; csswinner
Besides the award websites, there are a number of curated galleries on web design. The galleries could be created by a single designer or a team. In most of those galleries, you can filter your search by style, colors, subjects and other various categories.
Some of the best-curated galleries: Site Inspire; Designspiration; Lapa Ninja ; One Page Love (features one-page websites); Flat Inspire (features flat designs) ; Styleboost (offers is a little summary against each inspiration)
Templates from Website Builders
One obvious place to look for web design inspirations is WordPress Themes as you are most likely using a WordPress Platform.
Besides WordPress, there are a number of website builders offering beautiful templates. You can definitely explore and get inspired by those templates even if you not using the particular builder.
Website Builders with beautiful templates: Squarespace ; Wix; Weebly
Design Blogs and Magazines
Design blogs and magazines are other sources to look for web design inspirations. You can go to showcase/inspiration sections and customize your search to find galleries as per own need.
Smashing Magazine ; WebDesigner News; Web Design Ledger; Web Designer Depot; Noupe; Web Designer Wall; Co.Design
Design Community Websites
To explore a wider variety of designs, you can visit online communities of web designers.
Behance and Dribbble are very happening community websites where designers showcase their works. There is also a thriving community of designers and design enthusiasts in Pinterest.
Author: Dovan Rai
Dovan is passionate about education technology and worked at OLE Nepal, where she designed educational software for public schools in Nepal. She has a PhD in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
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