Dribble, TED, and Medium

Inspiration comes in many forms, but one of the easiest places to get ideas, gain insight, and gleen inspiration is the world wide web. Today I'm going to talk to you about a few of my favorite websites and why they Inspire me, both in terms of UX and in terms of features.

Dribbble.com

As a graphic designer first and foremost, I have found Dribbble.com to be one of the greatest sources of inspiration for work both in and out of the office. For those of you who don't know what Dribbble is, it's an amazing networking site for graphic and web designers alike. It acts as a sort of mini portfolio to share shots of your latest work and gather critiques from other artists. The amount of quality work posted to this site is staggering. One of the greatest aspects of this site is the necessity to be invited to the network by another Dribbbler in order to be able to begin posting.

This has allowed Dribbble to grow in size without losing the quality of work that so many designers expect to see on the site daily. Not only does Dribbble act as a source of critique and as a mini portfolio, it also acts as a source of inspiration. This sites awesome tagging system for images uploaded, and powerful search engine allows you to search through thousands of artists work for inspiration pertaining specifically to the project at hand. Looking to create a logo for a coffee shop but don't know where to start? Type in coffee logos and get a whole bunch of quality examples that have already been created to start your creative juices flowing.

Just want some ideas for layouts for your next typography project? Well Jessica Hische and a number of other industry acclaimed typographers are constantly posting new shots of their work to the site. As a non-paying member you only can post a certain number of shots, but start paying and you can post shots, links to your contact info, and have the ability to start getting hit up for work. Its a great place to network with other designers as well as get approached by companies looking for someone with specific skills for their freelance needs.

Dribbble also has a number of resources for artist participation, like the ability to sign up as part of a company or a group, and the ability to "rebound" or build shots inspired by other's shots. It is a way to practice your craft and have fun with other artists and designers. All in all as Dribbble continues to build out more features, it continues to grow as the best place for design, User Experience, and inspiration.

Medium.com

My second favorite site for inspiration is Medium. In terms of blog sites, its definitely one of my favorites. All readers can participate as writers, which creates a great community of knowledgeable resources on any subject.

Medium allows its users to follow particular collections of writing based on topics, or certain people and companies.Based on what collections you follow, Medium curates the newest posts for you to read each day. You can also bookmark posts for later, or read the Top 100.

I think the layout of Medium is absolutely beautiful. It's super clean and completely mobile friendly (I've been known to browse it while in line at the grocery store, bathroom, Starbucks, etc.) Large Super splashes open each page and break up the content. It's great for those of us who enjoy visual representations alongside what we are reading.

The content on Medium is super high quality and is written by industry leaders. It's an opportunity to read more than the non-objective media. It's an opportunity to get inside scoop on everything from science to programming, as well as get insider perspectives and tips and tricks to make your work and life better.

My biggest pet peave with Medium is that I have been on it for almost a year, and I still can't figure out how to view all recent posts. I want to be able to follow more collections, but I can't seem to get out of the cycle that I'm currently stuck in. I want to read all recently posted items. Not just those items posted by the people and collections I am following.

Ted.com

Ted.com is probably my all time favorite time-waster website. Mostly because when I'm done watching a video, I don't actually feel like I've been wasting time. I love the layout of the website. It's created with browsing in mind. The designers of the site have made it so easy to find interesting talks to watch. I love that the navigation is so simple on this site as well. Right from the get go you get to see a plethora of newest released videos, and alongside that, it is easy to navigate to top watched, and my favorite: hidden gems.

Ted as an organization is focused on building quality conversation around the things that matter. From great talks on design and User Experience, to enlightening lectures on Artificial Intelligence, sea cucumbers, and tales of adventures around the world, the Ted website is a blackhole of inspiration, and interesting content.

It's not easy to get lost on the Ted site, but it is so very easy to lose yourself amongst the hundreds of lectures and conversations.

Ted fullfills our desires to keep learning and growing with the universe around us, and their site is built for those of us with the hearts for exploration and inspiration. They provide transcripts for when I don't feel like watching a video, but still want to learn something new, and they also make it so easy to share content directly from their site.