15 Places to Find the Creative Inspiration You Need

15 sites for creative inspiration

A list of go-to sites guaranteed to spark your creative juices.

The demand being placed on your creative capacities are ever-growing. The content monster needs to be fed. Your social stream needs to be supplemented.

To keep the supply of creativity going you need inspiration. You need to constantly refill your creative tank.

So I’ve curated this list of 15 sites that I go to regularly for inspiration so that you might also find some yourself.

Websites for Inspiration

The following is a list of websites that I’ve found a great deal of inspiration on. I’ve also split them into categories to ensure you get the right kind of inspiration.

Photography

Stuck In Customs

stuck in customs

Stuck In Customs was featured in my last version of inspiring websites. It is the personal site of Trey Ratcliffe, one of the best photographers in the world (IMO).

In it he shares his personal work, recommendations, lessons and more about photography.

VSCO Grid

the-grid-1280x720

VSCO Grid, from the makers of my favorite mobile photo editing app, allows you to publish your work on what they call “the Grid”. That has a very Tron sound to it, but that’s not what you’ll experience when you go there.

The Grid is a feed of all the work published by users. You can catch some really beautiful stuff there. On top of that, you can click on individual images and use the ‘…’ underneath to see what they used to create each image.

Design Inspiration

Abduzeedo

abduzeedo

Abduzeedo is a creation of Fabio Sasso. More than just a place where inspirational design pieces are shared, it also houses a growing archive of great Photoshop, Illustrator and Pixelmator tutorials.

I’ve not only gained a fair amount of inspiration from this site, but it was a critical part in my learning Photoshop and Illustrator myself.

Niice.co

niice

Niice is essentially a search engine and simple moodboard for inspiration. According to it’s home page the results are “hand-picked” from the best sources.

The ease of creating moodboards is also a great way to capture inspiration and save it into boards for later.

Designspiration

designspiration

Designspiration is very much like Niice, but it’s been around for a bit longer. You can create an account and seek out the things that inspire you.

They also have additional filters on the side so you can see Everything, Popular, or Random pieces. Very cool way to just browse for something that catches your eye.

Company Folders (Sponsored)

Company Folders Screenshot

Company Folders is a great place to find a limitless supply of design ideas to help spark your creative juice if you’ve run out of steam on your own. You can browse through their galleries and get ideas for days.

And if you want to save yourself some time, they even download their templates to recreate exactly what you’ve been inspired by! This is great for designers and non-designers alike who want to save time on the design process and still get great results.

Writing Inspiration

Brain Pickings

brain pickings

Brain Pickings is just one of those sites that makes you think. Random yet stimulating and addictive articles that share inspiring, informative, educational, or otherwise just interesting things.

If you’re looking to get your intellectual brain working, this is where I’d begin.

Jeff Goins Blog

jeff goins blog

I’ve had the pleasure of watching Jeff Goins’ blog go from “I would really like to be a professional writer some day” to “I’ve made it as a professional writer and I want to teach you how to do it too!” It’s truly inspirational to me.

Jeff is living his dream as a professional writer and teaching others to do the same.

Jon Acuff’s Blog

jon acuff blog

Jon Acuff’s blog has gone through a lot of changes over the years. You know the one thing that hasn’t change though? His ability to pen a captivating, insightful, and hilarious story.

His subject matter varies from motivational to educational and always adds a bit of humor to make it all go down smooth.

Web Design/Development Inspiration

Codrops

codrops

Codrops is where I go to find the best tutorials and inspirational concepts for future (or current) web design projects. The site itself is beautiful and their articles are always well written.

Codyhouse

codyhouse

Codyhouse is a newer site, similar to Cordons, that contains tutorials and demos for cool web design and development projects. Their library may not be huge, but the stuff they’ve got so far is awesome.

CSS-Tricks

css-tricks

CSS-Tricks has a fantastic community of helpful designers and developers contributing to a giant database of articles, code snippets and forums. Be careful though, it’s easy to get sucked into that place for hours.

Social Networks

For most people, the most convenient and accessible ways to find digital inspiration is right inside their favorite social networks!

Below are the ones I use regularly and how you can find the inspiration you’re looking for in them.

Google+ Collections, Communities, Circles

google+ collections communities and circles

On Google+ it’s incredibly easy to create an inspiration feed for yourself. Use any/all of the following features to fill your Google+ experience with more inspiration than you can handle:

Collections: Using Google’s newest feature you can search out and follow Google+ Collections that are filled with the things that inspire you.

Communities: Search for and join active communities that are being filled with inspirational content.

Circles: As I’ve recently iterated, if you manage Google+ circles effectively you can easily dictate your experience browsing through your stream. Set up a circle of people who post inspiring things and visit it frequently.

Twitter Lists and Collections

twitter lists

Lists: Using Twitter’s lists feature, you can set up a list of people who share inspirational links, quotes, images or videos. There’s also other great uses for lists, but let’s stay on track.

Collections: An underutilized tool that Twitter has is the ability to go beyond Favorites and actually add tweets to a collection. This can only be done using Twitter’s TweetDeck app.

Whenever you come across something on Twitter that inspires you just place it into a collection. Then, whenever you’re creativity is running dry, visit your Twitter collection and be re-inspired!

Pinterest

pinterest

Much like Google+ Collections, you can follow Pinterest boards that contain inspiring things. Just do a quick search on Pinterest for the things that inspire you (try adding the word ‘inspiration’ at the end) and you’ll find loads of good stuff.

Here are some recommended boards:

If you have any inspiring boards yourself, tweet them at me.

Tumblr Tags

tumblr tagged

If you type in /tagged/KEYWORD you will get a stream of all the posts on Tumblr tagged with whatever keyword you’ve used. So you can experiment with searching through tags such as:

Or any other keyword you think will help boost your creative juice. Just type it in after tumblr.com/tagged/ and you have an instant inspiration feed!

Your Turn!

Well you’ve seen my top sites for creative inspiration in 2015— now how about showing me yours?