As a webdesigner or an artist of any kind you always have to be on the lookout for inspiration. Unless you’ve achieved genius status and have stuck out on your own completely brand new path, you stand to gain alot from studying other people’s successes.

This gallery on flickr by Patrick Haney contains around 450 inspiring webdesigns- many of them, if you will excuse the redundancy, are exceedingly excellent.

In addition to providing personal inspiration, galleries like this one can speed up the design process with clients. Link your client to a gallery and ask them to single out a few designs with colors and layouts they like. It’s like giving them a menu to order from. This removes alot of the guesswork in trying to nail down what their tastes are, and can make the difference between a project dragging on for months through revision after revision and a genuinely satisfied customer.

It’s easy to complain about indecisive/slow-responding clients, but unless you as the designer are doing everything you can to inspire them and draw out their inner desires it is you who carries the blame for a stalled project. Tough words, I guess, but business is competitive, and the battle belongs to those who put forth the extra effort to be excellent.

Happy designing!

Galleries:
http://www.webcreme.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/splat/sets/981332/
http://www.webdesign-inspiration.com/
http://www.asiteaday.org/
http://www.cssheaven.com/

And here is a blog that links to 16 galleries:
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/16_sites_web_design_inspiratio/

Awesome stuff I’ve come across today.

A friend pointed me to colourlovers.com. They have color scheme swatches for color combination inspiration. Its pretty great for whatever you’re doing- websites, print, magazines, logos, etc.

Be sure to check out their articles on vintage czech posters and the colors of chess!

The retro art stuff reminded me of grainedit.com, so i went there.

The first article was about movie posters redone in a retro style. They’re so good it makes me sick.
Here are movies envisioned as old early reader book covers:
http://spacesick.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-can-read-movies-series.html

And here are 8 films redone in black and red. The last crusade one is bananas.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ollym/sets/72157607801959609/

Graphic design/artistic friends, got any websites you like to go to for isnpiration (besides deviantart)?

Messing around some logo ideas for Campbell University’s ITS department. The department is still figuring out how to brand and market themselves, so any logo I come up with will probably be obsolete in a semester or two. Still its a nice opportunity to practice my skills and get some exposure.