by Dan DeMeyere - @dandemeyere
Being inspired is one of the strongest types of motivation for me. When I see something great, I can become inspired to build something of equal caliber or at least put more effort into what I'm currently working on. Sometimes the execution of an idea can be just as inspiring as the idea itself. One great example of this is Path. The more you use their app, the more you can appreciate how much attention to detail was involved in building the app. Every interaction, every pixel, is perfect. It's hard to put into words the experience that is felt when you use something and everything is just 'right'.
So just in case you need some inspiration, here are some websites and Dribbble shots that I find inspiring.
www.BlameStella.com
Other than giving thredUP a great score, Stella's website has nice, non-obtrusive color tones that emanate an inviting feeling. It's refreshing to see a website that isn't exploding with 20 call to action buttons.
www.1minus1.com
I love the graphics on this site. A well crafted back-end can be just as important as a pixel-perfect front-end and the illustration of design and development being poured together into a funnel is a great visualization of this.
Fork CMS
When I'm looking to use a new library, gem, or application, I find that the presentation of the product impacts my judgment towards my willingness to give it a try. Fork CMS is a great example of this. There's no reason for me to use a new CMS, but after visiting their website I wanted to download it and try it out anyways.
Dribbbles
Now it's time for a couple of Dribbble shots. This Twitter share shot is particularly awesome for a subtle reason. Twitter makes it very hard to change the style and design of their Tweet button. You can do a custom-designed button that links to Twitter.com, but the user has to leave your website to make the tweet. To allow the user to tweet without leaving your website, you have to use their pre-built button/widget. This person designed around the button, instead of re-designing the button itself, which keeps the best functionality intact while making the developer's job easier.
No explanation needed for this one, I just think it's awesome and would be a really cool login interaction.
I'm not embarrassed to show the inspiration (or exact copy) of my work portfolio design. I was brainstorming the best way to allow users to interact with my professional experience on my website and a colleague of mine sent over this Dribbble. The UI looked so cool that I wanted to code it up just for the fun of it, but I liked it so much that I ended up keeping it.
A lot of these websites were discovered on line25's Websites of the Week series. It's a great RSS feed to follow if you're a fan web design. If you have any websites you would like to share, please link to them below in the comments.