Whether you're a brand spankin' new designer, or even a seasoned pro - we can all become a better designer. You've heard the phrases before, always room for improvement, yadda yadda! Well it's true. And when it comes to website design, one of the best ways to become better, is to learn by example. There are plenty of "website gallery" sites out there that showcase great looking websites. A great one is http://bestwebgallery.com/, and you can even find some decent designs at templatemonster.com. Now of course simply "viewing" these sites can help as far as coming up with ideas is concerned - but particularly for beginners and aspiring designers - you can take it a step further by actually attempting to duplicate a site design in photoshop. Now I don't mean *steal*, but I mean simply duplicate the design and see if you can create an exact duplicate. Why? Because it will help you in several ways. One way, it will help you and force you to become more familiar with the tools in your design application (more often than not that'll be photoshop, which is what I use). And most importantly, it can help you develop a sense of design. When you sit there and do the leg work in duplicating a design, it helps you, on a subconscious level to become a better designer even though you aren't actually designing it yourself. Do this a few times, and you'll see that when you attempt to create your own design from scratch, you will have improved. There you have it. This pointer brought to you by: www.garysimon.net
I agree 100%. I'm always looking for inspiration from other web designers for all my new projects. One huge resource I use for getting colors is colourlovers.com. This goes right along with your article because one feature colourlovers has is a "Trends" section where you can check out other popular website's colors. Good work. Thanks!