I was venting to a friend of mine the other day about not being able to articulate what I want to the graphic designers I work with. I explained that often I have the idea of what I want, but have difficulty expressing that thought semantically. Other times I have no idea what I want, making it even harder to dictate my desires. Both cases have often resulted in a finished product that I’m not entirely satisfied with. I have chalked this up to me not having enough graphic design experience, something that I just simply don’t have the time to learn. My friend, who is a graphic designer and the perfect person to have vented to about this dilemma, graciously provided me an invaluable annotated list of resources for inspiration. He suggested I look on these sites to find what I want and then give it to my graphic design team in order to direct their creation more efficiently. This method has worked wonderfully so I thought I’d share it with others who fall into my same quandary. This has also served as an excellent way to stay up to date on the latest visual trends. Here is list: (also if you have any sites to add please share!)
Inspiration
- http://dribbble.com/ (my favorite site for inspiration, this site will probably have the most relevant inspiration for designers)
- http://vectips.com/ (another favorite site for inspiration, has some resources too)
- http://creattica.com/ (one of the first sites I used for inspiration)
- http://typeverything.com/ (awesome typography inspiration)
- http://designspiration.net/
- http://www.behance.net/
- http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/
- http://grainedit.com/ (good inspiration, this site interviews designers and shows their work)
- http://dropula.com/ (not updated often, but some cool stuff)
- http://spyrestudios.com/
Resources
One of my favorite ways of making small ads/banners is to find a good font for the headline first and building around that.
- http://freebiesbug.com/ (favorite new site for resources, geared more towards web development, but still helpful for all designers)
- http://pixelpixelpixel.com/
- http://www.webtexture.net/ (cool texture resource)
- http://designmoo.com/featured/ (haven’t used this one much, but it’s worth mentioning)
- http://www.noupe.com/ (good resources and inspiration)
- http://vector.tutsplus.com/ (good for tutorials, though you have to be a paid member to get some of the tutorials)
These sites help inspire me though they are not geared towards designers
- http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/ (has design inspiration and resources, but a lot of other random posts)
- http://inspirationfeed.com/ (similar to hongkiat)
- http://www.thisiscolossal.com/
- http://www.designboom.com/
- http://butdoesitfloat.com/
Librarian Enumerations 
I can TOTALLY relate to this. There are a couple of different issues I’ve encountered:
1) Not knowing what I want. – I work around this by (like you do) providing a ton of examples of what specific things/graphic elements I like and WHY.
2) Working with someone that has no passion or personal-interest invested in your particular projects. – I used to work with a freelancer who just had no interest in being innovative. It was just about getting the project done and getting paid. It was awful and she was really hard to work with. Again in this situation you have to be REALLY REALLY clear about exactly what you want because they will take you at face value and not do more than that.
I’m always downloading free educational content from vendors and I make sure to save them so that I can reference the pieces I like and show them to my designer.
I’m now lucky enough to have a fantastic in-house designer. And even when it’s not quite right we still manage to get it to a good place quickly. He’s invaluable.
And thanks for all the great links.
No problem! I love the idea of downloading free educational content from vendors. I am definitely going to start doing that w/ the library vendors we work with. Thanks for sharing your tips 🙂