Whether you’re creating a website to represent your new business or simply creating a page to showcase a hobby, the first step to launching a successful site is to find a suitable design. With over 1.5 billion active websites already online, it can be a daunting prospect to build a site that truly stands out.
One easy way for beginners to design a memorable and functional website is to take the best parts of a number of existing designs and incorporate them to create an entirely new concept.
Where can you find web design inspiration? Here’s a list of 4 web design sites to get you started…
- Awwwards
Awwwards is an internationally recognised web design award that showcases the best of the best on the web. This web design award example is a great illustration of a slick, timeless design that utilises a sharp monochromatic colour palette to catch the eye. By exploring past entries and winners of the award, you can easily get a sense of what works and what doesn’t and apply it to your own site design.
Launched in 2010, Pinterest is a US based image sharing and social media site, where uses can curate image boards showcasing their interests and ideas. By searching popular key phrases, such as ‘user interface’ and ‘web design’, you can explore thousands of innovative web layouts on one page. Pinterest also allows you to create your own boards, where you can save your favourite images in a collection. Once you’ve ‘pinned’ a few images, you’ll start to recognise patterns in the styles that appeal to you. This can help you form a stronger idea about which design elements you want to incorporate in your own site.
- CSS Nectar
CSS Nectar is a site that aggregates website designs and then allows the community to rank them against three different categories: design, coding and creativity. Using these votes, websites are then given an overall score. By browsing through CSS Nectar, not only can you view dozens of gorgeous examples of functional and fashionable websites, but you can also determine which aspects of a website draw the highest scores. For example, you might find that a site with personalised typography scored highly on the creativity front, which tells us that viewers favour unique touches and you may wish to incorporate custom fonts into your design.
CSS Nectar also has the added bonus of allowing you to search designs by colour, feature and country.
- Deviantart
Deviantart is home to the biggest community of artists and designers on the web. Since its inception in 2000, the website has been a fantastic place to share art, enter design competitions and learn new artistic skills. The ‘web design’ section boasts a constantly updated collection of intriguing user-created web designs to encourage and inspire you. Deviantart is a particularly valuable tool if you’re still a budding designer, as it also hosts many tutorials that will help you learn to create your own eye-catching interfaces and bold banners.
Creating the perfect website for your business or hobby is no easy task. However, by using these 4 fantastic websites for inspiration, you should be well on your way to bringing your new web design to life.