Article: Get Inspired – 20 Great Websites to get your Creative Juices Flowing

Designing a website isn’t always as straight-forward as we’d like it to be. Thankfully, there are a ton of websites you can check out for inspiration. Presented below are my top 10 resources for logo and website designs, in no particular order.

If I missed anything you feel should be tacked on to the list, drop a comment below and let me know.

Logo Designs

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  FaveUp features some of the greatest and cleanest logos on the web. Users can leave ratings but unfortunately cannot comment; it may be hard to decipher why that great business logo you’ve just spotted only received a two-star rating. It’s not updated very often, but when it is, you can expect quality stuff. FaveUp is also a great place to check out business card designs.
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  LogoTwo is a clean showcase site, well divided into logical sections such as Audio, Book, Chat, Mobile that makes browsing for a specific niche a breeze. Users are allowed to comment and rate designs, but unfortunately very little constructive criticism can be found here.
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  IDAP is, for lack of better terms, a searchable database of widely-recognized logos. It comes in handy when looking for a specific effect you’d like to recreate but seems to be missing quite a few popular technology-related brands. Still, it’s definitely a site you should have bookmarked a while ago.
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  LogoPond is a great place to get feedback on your logo designs. While not all comments are actually worth-while, it’s a great place to learn about what can make or break your drafts, with plenty of users on-board for the ride.
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  If the name doesn’t give it up, Logo Design Love is a blog on logo design and a great source of high-quality materials for inspiration. There’s also a large collection or articles, tips and miscellaneous tricks related to design.
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  Brand New showcases the latest and greatest releases from the corporate side of design.
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  DeviantArt has a collection of thousands of logos in all shapes, forms and quality: from the down-right horrible MS Paint doodles to the highest quality professional grade designs. While it may be more time consuming to browse through the seemingly endless pages, you can usually find solid criticism and tips on DA… along with drawings of furries and other weird otaku stuff that I won’t mention.
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  LogoSauce, while similar to most showcase sites, is well-built and allows users to comment and other designer’s logos. It’s a good place to find inspiration and tips on improving your designs.
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  Back in March 2007, Smashing Magazine announced a logo contest. With nearly 200 logos having hit their inboxes, Smash Mag has indexed the top designs for your viewing pleasure. They also have many, many interesting articles on design. If you haven’t already, do sign up to their RSS feed. You won’t regret it.
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  Logo of the day showcases a single logo per day. Simply put, only the best logos make the cut and are presented in one the best layouts I’ve ever seen in a showcase website. Hat’s off to the guys at Logo of the Day.

Website Designs

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  A well-designed showcase site, Design Snack is a great place to start. Users can post their designs, get rated and post comments on other designs. At the time of the writing, Design Snack was close to hitting the 1000 submissions mark.
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  Web Creme is slick, simple design showcase site. However, it unfortunately does not support user ratings nor commenting. Designs can be sorted by color schemes.
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  We Love WP is a Wordpress showcase index with hundreds of high quality blog designs and have a sweet logo to boot. It’s index is well divided in categories and allows users to post comments.
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  Template Monster is probably the world’s largest Templates website. You can browse thousands of high quality designs divided into several dozen categories and style. A good place to start when you’re designing a niche site.
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  Flickr’s Web Design Inspiration Set features over 400 screenshots of high quality website designs. I don’t think I need to ramble on about Flickr.
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  Yet another showcase website, Unmatched Style features many high-quality website designs with user comments and a rating system. Designs can be browsed by keywords or tags.
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  CSS Remix is another showcase site with a twist; it’s a no-fuss design overload. The front page alone showcases over 50 website designs in an easy-to-browse format.
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  CSS Mania, to be blunt, features over 12,000 websites. Just go see it and awe in amazement at the enormous library it offers. Unfortunately, it does not seem to have a proper navigation system such as tags or categories.
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  If your style is single-page design, you’ll fall head over heels for One Page Love. It’s well divided and easily browsed through the use of all kinds of tags and categories.
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  The Design Shack is no-nonsense CSS gallery with over 1,500 high quality designs including detailed information about each design and a rating system. It even will suggest similar designs.