40 Top Creative Design Resources that Inspire Professional Graphic Designers
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Inspiration can be critical to overcoming a creative design block, or just keeping the air in your creative sails. Finding and routinely following creative design resources is a great way to stay on top of trends, spark ideas, and simply appreciate the great works that inspire professional graphic designers.
In the wide web world these days the amount of variety can be dizzying, and with the melding of graphic design for print with web design, many resources focus on a mixture of tips, tricks and showcase tutorials that jump back and forth between the coded and physical realm. But what’s best for pure print inspiration?
Our library of graphic design templates here at Inkd has become a very popular source of inspiration in it’s own right – with 1,000’s of designs in a marketplace that allows for cutting edge style to flourish without the usual limitations of a client relationship. We appreciate the notoriety, so we thought we’d grab some opinions from our hundreds of contributing designers and our own internal design team. Here’s the top resources hand-picked by inspired and inspiring professional graphic designers.
The Elite Creative Design Resources
Truly remarkable, always engaging, and always professional. The best of the best:
The best of the best – professional creatives displaying their latest work for promotion and or critique. By far the largest resource for high quality work in a variety of disciplines. |
Though not as frequently updated as some resources on this list, the one-man-show Fabien Barral puts on with his collection of work that inspires him is always incredible. |
This new site from the folks at UnderConsideration has a laser focus on printed media, maintaining gorgeously detailed coverage on some truly spectacular projects. |
A minimal but dynamic browsing experience will take you far down the rabbit hole of the best visual snippets to be found on the web. |
A terrific informative showcase on the cutting edge. Other endeavors such as their publication and monthly talks in London, which are also archived online! |
With this resource to inspire graphic designers, truly hidden gems are posted by Antonio Carusone daily in an eye catching minimal format. |
An interactive international showcase of creative work, there’s lots of eye candy, but also lots of other great features and information. |
Designed and published biannually by studio NEWWORK, this large-format arts publication is simply stunning. |
Straight out of Australia, this showcase covers a variety of creative work and events from the region. |
The “Media Bookmarking” Showcases
At-a-glance interfaces full of eye candy from editorial groups:
Currently boasting over 1000 creative members each contributing snippets of stuff they like and want you to know about. |
Design news and mini-showcases as well as resources in a dynamic interface that lets you dip in and out of features. |
An invite only media bookmarking showcase that quite rapidly brings forth some great design to it’s at a glance interface. |
A project by Drew Wilson to create a gallery showcase that focuses on the artists as well as the art. It does a great job of that with it’s informational format. |
Galleries of galleries inspiring across the board of creative categories. One click leads to another, and another… |
With its supplement news site feed and rating system, this showcase community from Envato includes business cards, logos, and posters among along with web mediums. |
Daily posts are rated and commented through this portal that is heavy on flashy trends, but eye catching all the same. |
Another showcase covering a range of creative work that has been super-produced. Some incredible work though. |
The Blogs or Blog-Like
Showcases that usually contain more in depth or informed comment:
Always unique and always delightful, this vintage and inspired-by-vintage showcase blog keeps you looking back and smiling. |
A range of design related articles full of content bubbling up from the web. Though inclusive of web design trends, the graphic design material is worth a look. |
A spectacular review of creative disciplines that is web heavy, but the showcases is so creative and inspiring it’s a must see. |
Design news and inspiration with some very nice articles and some print gems. |
A great smaller blog showcasing Mirko Humbert’s favorites freebies and news. |
A very interesting blog style showcase that usually pulls inspiration from some very unique sources – very original. |
Current and Past Work from Professional Graphic Designers
Agency and personal work that is either published, or award winning and admired:
A large reference library from AIGA’s annual design competitions. An easy to browse eclectic mix from professionals through the years. |
Started by Fredrik Samuel, this blog showcases some of the best, and worst ads from professionals, along with their editorial take on why they work or don’t. |
A great portal and vast archive from Graphics.com that shows tons of work from professional designers and agencies around the globe. It’s very handy to search and sort through. |
Things Magazine – The Pelican Project A wonderful project from Things Magazine showcases Pelican, the informational offshoot of Penguin Books that shares the same inspiring style of cover design. |
The Communities
Hundreds or thousands of designers in communities that don’t leave you looking for a needle in a haystack:
A massive community showcase of gig and event posters from thousands of designers all over the world. Amazing new work can be found here each and every day. |
Did you know that tons of graphic designers showcase their work on Flickr? Yep, it’s true. And the variety of design centric groups you can easily find are terrific. |
Sometimes finding great design here can be tricky – but make no mistake this massive arts community is a showcase for more than a few exceptionally talented folks. |
Practically inventing social bookmarking makes Delicious one of the largest, best ranked and organized resources for what professional designers think they need to keep handy. |
Books Books Books
So you can walk away from the glowing rectangle:
Design Observer Recommended Books While not necessarily focused on design inspiration, this might be one of the most valuable sites out there, and it’s archive of posts on books, as well as it’s recommendation sidebar are not to be missed. |
Smashing Magazine – Books List A great list to get you started before you head to the bookstore, or even (gasp) the library. |
One particular publisher that keeps bubbling up in recommendations. |
Packaging Design
This print design specialty, because of it’s branding importance and more, usually showcases solid creative design:
Always putting up beautiful designs you don’t see elsewhere. A great editorial team makes this one of the top packing design blogs. |
Another great blog style showcase and even a forum. Terrific name. Even more to be seen under that moniker at FFFFound. |
Smashing Magazine – Packaging Design Another large article showcasing some great work from a variety of sources. |
Vote Up and Vote Down Design Articles
These Digg style sites for design can usually yeild some hidden gems and trends:
Galleries, portfolios and inspirations accompany the voting, so this site has a little more happening than others. |
Digg for design – our personal favorite thus far. |
More Digg for design. |
More still. |
And the newest kid on the block. |
Voted Up on Twitter
Same as the above, but ranked by number of tweets and retweets, so designers don’t have to be a member to vote, but they do need to mention it publicly:
Currently the most widely used and popular resource in the Digg for Twitter style. Good design category. |
More Digg for Twitter. Has a design subcategory. |
Even more! Yes it’s a popular concept! Harder to find design centric tweets here though. |
So what do you think? What did we miss? Which resources do you like the most and why? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think of the proliferation of design inspiration in general on the web.
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Tags: design, inspiration, Resources
