most inspired

Design in general is always evolving and changing. From the dull, lifeless days of bland, boring websites to the age of color and excitement when it comes to web design – all in the space of just a few short years. There’s no doubt that design trends, styles and techniques are changing rapidly, and that as designers, it’s our responsibility to keep up and build on this change.

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The branding and image of a company is extremely important, because ultimately a good image leads to more sales – period. Psychology dictates that a person is more likely to buy a product/service if they have an emotional attachment (which can be achieved visually) to that product or service in the way it is presented. In basic terms, if a visitor “likes” your website they’re more inclined to buy something from it. The way you can build an emotional attachment is through design aesthetics which create a feel of quality or affordability (dependent on which image you’re going for).

So, how do you go about planning and implementing a design such that you produce one that presents a positive image? Have you always wanted to adopt a technique that allows you to plan and develop the aesthetics of a website, logo, or poster design to a high degree? Well, I think mood boards are for you.

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If you’re inner muse is working correctly, you’ll find inspiration strikes just when you need it, but if you’re like the rest of us you’ll find that inspiration strikes at the oddest of times.

In this post I take a look at some tools to help manage inspiration: getting it to strike, and making sure it isn’t lost when it does.

Getting Inspiration to Strike

Take a break

One of the best ways to get inspiration to strike it to take break. When you stop trying so hard your mind find the inspiration — it usually does! Go out for a walk or one of the most successful methods is taking a shower.

Look at other peoples work

You know about the power of CSS galleries, that’s why you’re on Most Inspired, but there are plenty of other methods to find inspiration online and off.

From books, and magazines, to museums and album covers the sources of inspiration are endless.

Mind Maps

Building a Mind Map can be an effective way of finding inspiration.

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. — Wikipedia

There are many free and commercial Mind mapping software applications. FreeMind is a popular open source application, written in Java so you should be able to run it no matter which OS you’re on.

Keeping Inspiration Handy

You’ve worked hard (or maybe you haven’t) and inspiration has finally struck. But just how do make sure you keep a hold of all those great ideas and possible solutions.

Digital Camera
A picture is worth a thousand words. Whenever you see something that is inspirational take a quick picture and you’ll have it for when you need it.

Notebooks
Inspiration can strike at any time, and usually does when you’re away from your computer. Keep some paper and pen handy at all times, for recording any ideas as they pop-up. Moleskin notebooks are popular among designers, especially the small squared variety that fit easier into pockets (yes I have one!).

Websites

Wridea is a web service first to avoid ideas being forgotten, then to organize and improve those ideas by giving you the opportunity to share your ideas with friends and necessary tools to improve your ideas by yourself and individually.

Sometimes you can’t get to a computer and don’t have anything to write on, or maybe you’re driving and can’t just pull over to write down that latest bit of inspiration. This is where Jott comes in. With a simple phone call you can have your inspiration emailed to you. Jott uses voice recognition to transcribe your message and emails it to the destination of your choice.

MAC Software
Leap / Yep
Leap and Yep are 2 pieces of software that are great for organizing your saved inspiration. Maybe you’ve taken screenshots of website or web page elements that you like to refer too, and you’ve saved these into folders on your hard drive. As you build up your collection finding what you need can become increasingly difficult.

Yep is aimed specifically at finding, organizing and viewing your PDF documents, and Leap for organizing all the the files on your computer.

Leap and Yep make use of tagging to enhance your folder hierarchy to make sure you can that inspiration just when you need it.

How do you manage inspiration? Or do you try not too and let it strike when it wants?

There are many fine tools to help you create a color theme for your offline or online projects.

Adobe’s Kuler was a late arrival but is a very slick web application for creating and sharing color themes. You can view other users creations, or drag and drop yourself your own theme. You’re able to save, publish and tag your themes, even export your themes as swatches for use in Creative Suite 2 applications (such as Illustrator or Photoshop).

ColorSchemer Studio is available for Windows users who can use the Color Wheel, Color Harmonies, or even Photo Schemer (which allows you to build unique color themes based on any picture, image or photograph) for creating color themes. ColorSchemer is currently priced at $49, well worth the price.

COLOURlovers is a personal favorite of mine, a great design community to create and compare color palettes, and read color related articles and interviews.

Whilst these tools are useful at exploring color trends and creating themes, they don’t help with deciding what is an appropriate color base for your project. What color should you use if you’re trying to design something ‘mellow’, or perhaps ‘romantic’.

I created Cymbolism to answer just this question.

According to Wikipedia:

Many color theorists throughout history have attempted to assign colors to particular human emotions. They believed that seeing particular colors caused particular emotions. Others even created tests they claimed would divulge the personality of the participant.

Cymbolism attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect.

Website visitors cast their votes on word-to-color associations by selecting a specific color when they are provided with a word and its description. These votes are saved, and over time, users opinions are quantified, providing designers with statistics on word-to-color associations. These statistics can then be used in choosing colors for your color themes.

These are not hard and fast rules, if everyone used to the same color for their projects things would look pretty boring. You often want to break the current trend, but how do you know you’re going against a trend if you know what the trend is!

The website was only recently launched and I’m still in the process of adding appropriate words that visitors can vote on, please feel free to suggest any you don’t find in our database. As more users vote on words the more useful the information will be, so please spread the word and get voting!

If you’re a big fan of enchanted ceilings, you’ll love this post with 10 Very Rare Cloud formations over at collthings.co.uk.

Some other very cool imagery is also available, from volcano eruptions, to nuclear test pictures, and dirty car window art, be sure to check it all out.

Working online, sometimes I get stuck into the old routine of seeking inspiration online, browsing the web looking for cool new things, or spending hours clicking thru the many design galleries out there.

There is a whole offline world that can act as a great source of inspiration, from magazines covers, to cd & dvd jackets, movie posters, newspapers and many more.

Sometimes it can better to turn off the monitor and take a look around.

A goal of most designers is to make their projects stand out in some way. With millions of websites online and more being added everyday, creating something unique is increasingly difficult. Each designer has a different approach. Here is a look at 6 things you can do to make your site standout.

1. Large Background Images

One of the easiest ways to create a unique design that is sure to stand out is to use a large background image. The images can enhance the layout of the page and make it more complete and visually appealing. With CSS, the background image is simple to add, and it can drastically change the look of an otherwise routine website.

Web Designer Wall is a well-known site that makes good use of a large background image. The site/blog uses a fairly standard two-column theme layout, but the background image gives the site a look that is anything but standard.

For more designs that feature large background images, see Fadtastic’s Big, Bold Backgrounds.

2. Unique Layouts

Most websites use one of a handful of common layouts. By thinking outside of the box and creating something a bit more unique, you can certainly standout from the crowd. The layout of the site is a big factor in usability and effectiveness, so be sure that whatever you come up with still works for you and for the user.

MelissaHie.com effectively uses a unique layout to differentiate from other sites. The site is really just one large page, and the navigation leads you from one section of the page to another. When you click on a link you will slide to the next section until you eventually arrive back at the start.

To see more examples of creative layouts, see 20 Websites With Unique Layouts.

3. Creative Navigation

The navigation of a website plays a large role in the appearance and the usability of the website. From an appearance perspective, navigation gives the designer a great opportunity to be creative and introduce other elements and rollovers into the design. The look and attractiveness of navigation should never overtake the need for usability, but even with a usable and accessible navigation scheme there is plenty of room for creativity.

BenHulse.com features a creative navigation menu that uses color to interact with the large image on the homepage. The picture includes 7 rows of color on the floor. The 7 navigational links are lined up above the rows of color on the floor, and upon hovering over a link an underline appears that matches the corresponding row of color on the floor. It’s a creative way to make the nav bar different, and it even enhances the effect of color on the design.

4. Minimalism

By using a minimalistic style you can stand out by not trying too hard to standout. I an effective minimalistic design does not simply lack substance, it achieves balance and attractiveness without the need for excessive design elements.

Finch uses a minimalistic approach to creative an attractive website that is different from most competitors because it is free of clutter and it doesn’t rely on a lot of images and pictures to achieve the look.

For more sites that use minimalism effectively, see 25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Design.

5. Improved Logo or Branding

The look of a website can be enhanced or held back by the quality and effectives of the logo and/or branding that is used. A very effective logo can greatly improve the look of a site and help it to stand out from the competition. Many websites don’t have quality logos, so this provides the opportunity to stand out.

To see some examples of great logos, see 15 Wonderfully Simple Logo Designs.

6. Horizontal Layout

If you really want to stand out, one sure way to accomplish this is by using a horizontal layout. Obviously, most visitors are used to scrolling vertically, so horizontal layouts are kind of a love-it-or-hate-it style. The Horizontal Way is a showcase gallery of horizontal designs, and appropriately it uses a horizontal layout itself. There is no vertical scrolling necessary, just left to write, similar to a book.

For more examples of horizontal layouts you can view the gallery at The Horizontal Way.