Stumped for Design Inspiration? Take a hike!

September 20th, 2007

 You know you’ve been there. You have to get a project started. You’re got all the details on the structure and functionality you need. But you sit down and every bit of creative juice that was ever in you has evaporated.

You go online and start surfing around. You open up magazines and books. And still, nothing.

I find myself in this situation more often than I’d like to admit. I’ve found one trick that has never let me down. So what do I do?

I go outside!

When you work and socialize and practically live online, it’s easy to dismiss the thought that anything offline could be a worthwhile source of inspiration. But in my experience, nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are more color combination and different shapes and patterns in nature than any designer could ever dream up.  It doesn’t matter if it’s sunny or cloudy, hot or cold, rainy or sunny or if you’re in the city or the country, just relax and look up and around you.

Even if you don’t think you’ll be inspired by the great outdoors, if you’re really stumped, a break and a brisk walk will probably do you some good anyway :)

70 Free Website Design Resources

September 12th, 2007

Obviously, if you’re in the market for a small business website, I’d love for you to contact me. But for anybody who is designing your own sites, I was going through several of my different social bookmarking accounts and thought I’d go ahead and put together some of the resources that I’ve run across.

Some I’ve used, others I haven’t…I’m not recommending you use any of them or advising you not to!

Color Tools

Text HTML Editors

What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) HTML Editors

CSS Layouts

Menus and Navigation

Backgrounds - Textures

Obviously, this is by no means a complete list of the great free resources that are out there. If you have other free resources that you think belong on the list, feel free to let me know in comments and I will add them in.

Please note that I do have comments that include links set to go into moderation…but I assure you, I’ll get to them ASAP and approve the comments and add your suggestions to the list!

I didn’t use anything other than my bookmarks to compile this list today…but I know there are probably tons of these type of resource lists around…so let me know if you have one of those too, and I’d be happy to add those to this list as well!

Handy Color Chart

August 20th, 2007

I just stumbled upon a great blog post over at the Color Schemer blog. They have put together a chart showing the browser-supported named colors…ie you don’t have to know the HEX value to use them.  It’s always good to know that chartreuse is easily accessible!

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