7 Design Sites You Might Not Know About
Even great designers need a little inspiration and help along the way. We've compiled a list of seven resources you may never have heard of, or were too afraid to explore, until now. Whether you have a design degree or design is a means to an end, these programs, tools, and communities are bound to propel your project into a work of art.
Canva
If you're unfamiliar with design and are still looking to create stunning visuals for your site, blog, or labels, Canva provides a simple web-based platform that can help. With seemingly endless layout, grid, and stock photo options (many of which are available for free), it won't be hard to make designs worthy of your business! One of the biggest strengths of Canva are the pre-sized canvas sizes fit for platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and more.
Niice
Niice is a beautiful visual search engine that pulls images from a select group of hand-picked sources. It's a great place to find design inspiration. Think of it like Pinterest – you find images you like and add them to a "moodboard." It even integrates with Google Chrome, so if you see an image while you're not explicitly looking, you still have the opportunity to add it to a moodboard.
Colour Lovers
Colour Lovers is a place where you can create and share colours, palettes, and patterns. It is an international, interactive community comprised of more than 7 million users, all dedicated to exploring the art of colour. Use ColourLovers to design anything from your labels to your brand, and everything in between.
The FWA
The FWA, or Favourite Website Awards, is an industry-recognised internet award program. FWA's showcase of cutting-edge creativity makes this website the ideal place to turn to for inspiration – both in terms of functionality and design. It's best known for its FOTD, FWA of the day award.
The League of Moveable Type
The League of Moveable Type provides some fantastic free and open-source font-face ready fonts. There are some great alternatives to the boring everyday web fonts that clutter our digital experiences. Nothing yells "look at me" quite like a font no one has ever seen before.
Subtle Patterns
Subtle Patterns provides high-quality textured patterns for the background of your big project. The tileable patterns are perfect for web or graphic design projects, adding another layer of visual interest to your design. The plugin feeds its extensive library straight into your Photoshop panel, so it's always there when you need it and up-to-date.
Adobe Color CC
Adobe's Color CC app lets you build colour schemes using a colour wheel tool. If you don't remember the rules of complimentary and analogous colours, you can select the colour rule you want to apply and the wheel does the rest. Drag and drop your colour pins wherever you'd like on the colour wheel and the rest will follow to create your ideal palette. You can also browse thousands of colour combinations from the Color CC community.
With all the tools of the Internet at your disposal, it can be overwhelming trying to find the right one. Use the seven tools above to help make your design really pop without the headache of going at it alone. Designed for varying degrees of experience, you'll be sure to find the ones that work best for you! Proud of the label creation you made with the help of the resources listed here? Share it with the world on our Customer Ideas page.
