What do you guys do when you have "design block"?

Here is a site I just found with tons of sites to look at to get those creative juices flowing.

http://www.coolhomepages.com/sort/in...P=72&pageNo=14

these are some of my bookmarks

www.cssdrive.com
www.cssbeauty.com
www.cssmania.com
www.cssvault.com
www.cssimport.com
www.designshack.co.uk
www.cssremix.com
www.thinkvitamin.com

praveen - self promo in a well suited topic? adding to the list you posted

For Design inpiration I look to my vast collection of movies at home. It might be strange but it throws more ideas into my head. I think the dramatice music, scenes and just the over feeling from the movie gets the ideas flowing. Then I put it to the computer.

Originally Posted by Silkjaer

praveen - self promo in a well suited topic? adding to the list you posted

looking at your own site is a design inspiration???

Praveen, the site is a web site showcase

This site is made to promote web designers who has web standards and semantic markup in mind when designing and coding. We want to publish a book, containing 150 of the very best web designs, articles and interviews with the designers. To achieve this we want you to help us! You can help by promoting this site through your blog and by submitting your favorite web designs. You can also help by browsing all the submitted designs, vote and comment on them. When a submitted site reaches 20 votes it will be moved into the approved section, where the final 150 web designs will be picked from.

okay, maybe I should clarify... Praveen and vglong4 are on the right track.
I like to look at really creative sites like the ones at the link I posted. I think that exposure to an array of design styles helps me come up with my own original ideas. It's like going to an art gallery and being inspired by some other artist... make sense?

Thanks for the Clarification Dan.

Silkjaer,

you are promoting your own site in this thread.
if someone else had added the link, it would have made sense as he or she liked it.

whatever content you might have in it, to post your own site in threads is termed as self promotion.
maybe you should take a look at the Ads, Offers and Services thread for promoting your site.

this thread is aimed more towards the designers who get into a block at times and for inspiration take a look at other sites and not for promoting one's site.

Dan,

have you taken a look at CSSreboot.com??

take a look

Thanks for the links Dan and Praveen. For my own design blocks I've generally done some searching for sites in the same industry as the one I'm designing and finding a few I like. I try to find sites that are in other cities than my client and not quite exactly with the same set of services or products. Looking at industry sites generates some ideas too for the site itself and I like to know a little about how the competition does things before I begin. I might borrow the color scheme of one site or the general layout of another to get myself started. From there I'll work to make sure the sites don't look the same and add in my own creativity.

Another things I've done is go to one of the free stock photography sites and just start downloading images that relate to the site I'm working on. Sometimes spending a couple of hours grabbing images generates some ideas.

I'll also try to pay more attention to anything visual around me in the days prior to working on a design. I'll look through magazines, especially the ads and pay more attention to images flashing by on tv. I've looked at paintings and sculptures and anything else that has some kind of visual appeal.

I've bookmarked all the links you both posted and now have a new way to find inspiration.

Magazines, letterheads, ads, movies, logos, etc

http://www.csszengarden.com is another great web resource...

This is great! I have noticed a lot of sites that say... this site was built by a team of people in a design firm... blah blah blah. How do you suppose a team works on the design of one site? Do they critique it or is each team member responsible for one element/portion (ie content, schema, color scheme).

Praveen,
Thanks for that... no, I haven't looked yet but I will.

Vangogh,
I'm tracking with you on noticing things in ad's and commercials. There's a lot of design magazines out there too. I like one called "Step"

3pointRoss,
I purchased the Zen of CSS Design a few weeks ago. I would recommend it to anyone!


One more thing... how do you all start, ie paper, photoshop, straight to html??? What method have you found to be the easiest to get your thoughts out?

Thanks again guys!!

Dan I'm not sure I know Step, but I'll take a look. I'll actually be at the place I get magazines in an hour or so. The ones I have here now are Digit, How, and DG. I don't buy them every month since there all $10 and up, but I pick them up every so often.

Is Zen of CSS Design a book? I haven't heard of that till now.

I try all sorts of things when starting a design. Sometimes I'll start with a very rough sketch or just work out that sketch in my head. Not much more than a basic layout. It tends to come together for me more in Photoshop I've been finding. Just taking that basic sketch layout and beginning to add a little color or a few images. The last couple of sites I worked on I found I kept adding all sorts of things in different layers and then turning things on and off in different combinations till I found something I liked. it actually worked well since I was able to give my client two different designs from the same file just by turning a few things on and off.

The weird part is that sometimes for me it's in the code where it comes together. I'm a better coder than a graphic artist so there are things I can see clearly in my head and how to code them, but have a harder time creating it in Photoshop. (I need to improve my Photoshop skills more) I've sometimes given some rough comps to clients and asked them to trust me that it will come together on the page. I've been lucky that they've generally agreed though I doubt that will always be the case.

You know I've also turned to other non visual arts to break through a block. Reading poetry or fiction or just putting on the right cd. When I get into the music enough I can sort of see the rise and fall of the rhythm or just various patterns in the progression of the melody. Doesn't always trasfer to creating something visually, but can get me in the right frame of mind.

One more thing... how do you all start, ie paper, photoshop, straight to html??? What method have you found to be the easiest to get your thoughts out?

i always think about project when i go to sleep, in that way while i am slowly dozing i think about what i want to do etc and get up the next day and slowly implement them.

i always go straight to dreamweaver and work arnd the layouts..

I do the thinking before sleep thing too. It gets your subconscious working on the problem even when you're not aware. I think it can provide for some of those aha moments when the idea seems to come full blown into your head.

Dan I picked up Step earlier though haven't had a chance to give it more than a cursory glance.

Thank you, thank you!! I am always looking for new site designs and I don't have any of these on my list. Design block is one of my reoccuring frustrations LOL

Adding the links I use for inspiration would help, duh.

http://www.csszengarden.com/
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
http://www.returnofdesign.com/colors/

This is my process for design -

#1 - Get all the information possible from the client about types of designs they like, colors they like, there company information, etc

#2 - Thumb Nail Sketches, I probably draw 30 - 40 thumb nail sketches

#3 - 1/4 Page sketches of 2-3

#4 - Full page Sketch of final

#5 - Layout the copy/text in HTML with no design/layout

#6 - Make alterations to the design to fit the copy/content

#7 - Go into dreamweaver, etc...

This is turning into something really great! thank you to everyone who has posted thus far!
I try to do a lot of wire framing in photoshop, but it usually ends up being more "fluff" and when I get into the coding portion, I find my self starting all over again. 3point, I'm with you on the sketching and then coding... I might start skipping wire framing in ps all together, even though it's nice for clients to have a visual first.

Alyssa - thanks for the links!!

3point - i really appreciate the list, sounds like a good plan. I usually try to ask all the right questions up front too.

Vangogh - I hope you like step... it's really a "print" mag, but I really love the way print looks on a web page, like pull quotes and I get a lot of layout ideas from print. I checked out digit too, I like it.

Thanks all!!!

another good way is read some of the top blogs - zeldman, simplebits, eric meyer... - they tend to have some of the best links to some cool sites as well.

thats how i found Vitamin

wow great links great sites! yup u jst got to browse a lot of websites & little by littlle comes up with a little idea of ur own. good ideas in designs always comes form somewhere...