Sometimes as a designer when I am starting a project, I like to have a good look around on the internet for some inspiration and also to see how other industry specific web-sites have been designed. I find that if I simply start with a blank sheet of paper and a blank 1200 x 800 canvas in Photoshop, I can struggle to get off the ground efficiently.
I tend to do the following when starting a new project:
- Look at my client’s existing web-site.
- Look at my client’s competitors web-sites.
- Look at web-sites also in the same industry as my client.
- Look other design resources such as web-sites and books.
- Sketch out some ideas.
- Move onto the computer.
The whole time I am doing this, I am taking notes, noting links and getting together a picture in my mind of how I am going to deliver a stunning an appropriate web design.
In particular, one of my favourite website design inspiration resources is a british web-site called ‘Design Shack’ and in particular their gallery page.
Always good when to know how a fellow web designer operates when beginning a new project. Cheers mate good job
Its always better to invest some time in learning about competitors designs before we proceed …
all the best
Hey James
1-3 are paramount, although it is good to sometimes go against the grain of the competition in order to stand out from the crowd.
You can also draw inspiration from outside environments for example driving in the car and looking at reflections on cars or patterns on the road or fields etc..
You are right with doing some of this not on the computer, that has always been one aspect on my list
Interesting approach! I have a slightly different method:
- gather information about the client’s business
Here, I collect screenshots of sites that catch my attention
- define content to be included on the site
- sort content into categories
- define the overall style: dark, light, glossy, business-like, etc
- go through the collection in my “Nice designs” folder
- define a set of keywords for the image/illustration search
- set up a lightbox of possible royalty-free images/illustrations/videos/flash files to use
- start with a 960×1200 (WxH) Photoshop canvas
I like Design Shack a lot! I haven’t seen this before. I’m using http://cssremix.com/ and http://99designs.com/ for inspiration
Cristian, thanks for the links, I’ve added those links to my inspiration bookmark!