It’s the end of the week and time for some fun, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite sites that give me a boost when I need a little design inspiration. These sites range from creative hubs like Etsy to nature photography and dance studio sites. I like to get inspiration from outside the general design sites, since every other designer is poring through Smashing Mag as well. To differentiate yourself, get outside the mold. Look around and see what’s happening in art, indie craft, music, and pop culture. Inspiration can strike in the oddest of places.
I’m warning you now: I’m a girl, so getting design inspiration for a restaurant site from the Anthropologie catalog makes sense to me—guys, you might just have to design websites like this too at some point, so keep reading.
Etsy is a great place to find anything and everything handmade. Artists of all varieties are hocking their wares on here. You can find a plethora of screenprinted shirts, handmade clothes from up-and-coming designers, hand-bound books, and more.
I love the background of jek2kdotcom‘s site.
Elliot Jay Stocks is a great resource. He’s also got a good taste in books. 
Can a site design get any cooler than Jesus Rodriguez Velasco?
Eduardo Recife @ Misprinted Type is awesome. His work has been featured in Time magazine, and he gives out free fonts!
Boompa—gorgeous watercolor effect on the front page.
Eranos has great typography, which gives a scholarly feel to this zine.
Hello Sour Sally should be a comic strip for young girls.
Anthropologie. Sigh… if only all the pretty clothes were in my closet instead of on my computer screen…
Pilobolus. Wow. Beautiful. The design only enhances the photography.
Patagonia’s Tin Shed
Exposed Planet: You’re place to find a couple minutes of meditation in the morning.
i love colors has a gorgeous background.
Modish: A site for everything handcrafted, maintained by a woman in Portland. I <3 it.
Indie Quarter. Lots of fun. Period.
the cool hunter makes you want to be cooler than you already are.
The Sartorialist has gained quite a following with his street photography. Beautiful work.
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Comments
10.16.09
… I also find myself torn between the coffee shop and my dual monitor setup
11.04.09
May I suggest ABR Viewer as an alternative to loading and trying each brush in Photoshop? It’s free, and I use it regularly. You may find this a great time-saving alternative!
http://abrviewer.sourceforge.net/
Hope it helps!
11.04.09
Thanks for the referral, Cyndi! I’ll have to spend some time tonight trying it out.
02.11.10
I love you to pieces man!!
10.14.10
I wished and wished for a Mac, then was given one at work.
So I moved all my files over.
I HATE it. I’m a designer. I have about 50 folders for 50 different projects. I name the banner psd “banner.psd” for all of them. Try and search for them all, yeah the Mac finds them but then you have to do “get info” for each one (or change some such setting and still click on each to see where the dang thing is located. On windows. I glanced at the path to the folder and voila. Yeah changing permissions on Vista is a headache but it’s far better than the constant problems I have on the Mac. Photoshop is twitchy at best, the thing crashes, although my Roku, PS3, Wii, personal laptop all do fine with my wirless, the mac drops it all the time. I use multiple monitors. Oh my god what idiot thought of leaving the application menu on one screen when the application is on another? You can only choose one little sprout because Steve Jobs knows better than you how you should work.
can’t wait to ditch it.
sorry tirade over.
ps tons of free windows applications out there.
11.26.10
Um… how about not naming all of your files the same name? Sounds more like an organizational issue than an operating system issue, either way.
I might recommend using an identifier and THEN _banner.psd? I assume it’d be difficult to find photos as well if every picture on a drive had its own folder and was named “photo.jpg”.
Examples:
Projectname_size_banner.psd
Clientname_size_banner.psd
etc…
04.17.11
Ok, so… I’m a total newbie to photoshop. I have CS5 and a brickton of brushes. I have tried renaming them, but they do NOT show up in the list like I want them to. I’ve played around with it for like a half hour. Can anyone please help?