Creativity, Inspiration, and Brainstorming

Section 1: Creativity, Inspiration, Brainstorming Articles, Tutorials, Resources, Software, and Books

The Creativity, Inspiration section includes annotated links to articles and tutorials on creativity, inspiration, creative Web site design, managing creativity, creative thinking ideas, inspirational brainstorming tutorials, creative ideas, and also inspirational websites, brainstorming software, mindmapping software, and more to help inspire your creative juices, workflow, and work with managing creativity.

Do you know of some good articles, tutorials, tips, software, Web sites, books, or other resources related to creativity, inspiration, and design? Recommendations are welcome and encouraged!

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Articles, Tutorials on Managing Creativity, How To Improve Your Creativity
Web Sites To Help Inspire and Cure Creative Blocks
Web Sites or Web Site Sections on Creativity, Inspiration, Brainstorming, Managing Creativity
Recommended Books to Help Creativity, Inspiration, and Cure Creative Blocks

Also within Creativity, Inspiration

Section 2: Tools for Brainstorming and Creativity (1 page)

Articles, Tutorials on Managing Creativity, How To Improve Your Creativity

Ever get stuck, get in a rut, get distracted, need some inspiration? The links to articles and tutorials below will help you get those creative juices flowing. They cover managing creativity, creativity, inspiration, creative Web site design, creative thinking ideas, inspirational brainstorming, creative ideas, inspirational websites, brainstorming software, mindmapping software, and more.

Coping with Daily Distractions
Great article from Creativity Web on how to work around daily distractions and how to create a space to inspire creativity, manage your creativity better and improve your creative thinking, and more. “How can one cope with the distractions of daily life that inhibit or deflect creativity (for example, child care, elderly parents care, dull job, ill health, etc.)?” [Tutorial dated 08/04/1999 by Charles Cave, Creativity Web.]
Forget Design 'Inspiration' - Just Stick to the Basics
Covers each of these and why they matter so much: planning, simplicity, typography, usability, refinement, practice. [Article/tutorial dated 08/06/2007, by Stuart Brown, for Modern Life.]
Getting Design Done
Great ideas and tips on boosting and managing creativity, removing creative blocks, and more. Author is also inspired by David Allen's great book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. “Here's how to apply the principles of a well-known productivity system to your creative process. The resulting creative habits can boost your design skills while they reduce stress and free your mind to tackle big problems.” [Article/tutorial dated 07/27/2007, by D. Keith Robinson, for Creative Pro.]
Mind Maps
An insightful article about how to creatively map out ideas as an aid in brainstorming, organizing thoughts, building on ideas, and more. The article has links to more information and resources, too. Fascinating. [Tutorial by Charles Cave, Creativity Web.]
Overcoming blankcanvasphobia
Great ideas on how to get past that blank canvas in Photoshop to create your designs - drawing on inspiration from others, learning from others' mistakes and how they've solved similar design problems/challenges, drawing from previous work, sketching, beginning with a grid, beginning in grayscale, starting with the “core”, unplugging, and more. Helpful tips and insight here from a top designer in the field. [Article/tutorial dated 01/16/2008, by Cameron Moll, Authentic Boredom.]
Seven Creative Habits you need to Acquire
Insightful article on how to create and maintain great creative habits. Topics include: Making creativity about play, not work; Letting your mind wander; Just do it; Mapping out your ideas; Challenging yourself every week; Celebrating your accomplishments; Actively seeking out new creative habits. [Article/tutorial dated 02/08/2008, by Tanner Christensen, Creative Something.]
Ten Creativity Kick Starts
Great ideas to build or boost your creative skills from Creativity Web. [Tutorial by Charles Cave, Creativity Web.]
Ways to Kickstart Your Creativity
Covers several areas to help you get inspiration, manage your creativity, and more. Topics include: Steps to creative thinking, design creativity books, design creativity exercises, creating sketches and thumbnail sketches, using a template to jumpstart your designs or use as a starting point. Helpful ideas in this article/tutorial. “Think creatively, brainstorm, and get inspiration...” [Article/tutorial by Jacci Howard Bear, Your Guide to Desktop Publishing, About.com.]
What A Great Idea
Articles and tips on creating new ideas, breaking out of negative thoughts, expanding and removing limitations, much more. Fun, interesting, uplifting website. Successful book available of same title, “What A Great Idea!” [Site by Chic Thompson, What A Great Idea.]

See also Section 2: Creativity Tools - Tools to Help Brainstorming and Creative Ideas for helpful software, creativity cards, resources, and more.

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Web Sites To Help Inspire and Cure Creative Blocks

Below you'll find Web sites to help inspire you and to help cure creative blocks.

Related within WebsiteTips.com: Inspiration for Logo Design.

10 Best-designed Web Sites in the World
Fabulous list of sites with screenshots and explanations about why the author chose these specific sites for his top 10 list. Great inspiration here. [Article/tutorial by Ben Hunt, for Web Design from Scratch.]
25 Beautifully Colorful Websites
“The 25 sites that are showcased here have, in my opinion, done a great job of incorporating color and creating an attractive appearance.” Listing includes screenshots with links to each site along with brief explanations of why the author included each site. [Article/tutorial dated 02/04/2008, by Vandelay Design Blog.]
60 Elegant and Visually Appealing Designs
“60 fresh, elegant, professional and visually appealing designs, which pay close attention to details and manage to remain simple, user-friendly and nice-looking.” Screenshots and links. Many more lists of top designs at this site, too. Good source for inspiration. [Article/tutorial dated 05/21/2007, by Smashing Magazine.]
300 images from 1800 sites
A wonderful collection of icons and images to compare, contrast, and study the techniques used by other graphic artists on the Web - arrows, blog posts, comments, bullets, print, shopping carts and shopping bags. Great for inspiration, ideas, brainstorming. [Article/tutorial regularly updated, by Ro London, for Intersmash.]
Accessites.org
This site is devoted to showcasing beautiful sites that are also universally accessible. You'll find lots of them here, along with insightful reviews about each site. From the site: “showcase and provide awards-recognition for certain websites — and the developers and designers who make them — which shatter the misconception that accessible web sites are boring and basic. It's not so and we intend to prove it, or rather, we'll ask others to furnish the evidence for us.” [Site founded by Mike Cherim, Green-Beast.com Hat tip: Wise-Women discussion list.]
CoolHomePages.com
An entire Web site devoted to help cure creative blocks. Hundreds of sites listed by categories. Sites are voted on and ranked, too. Excellent site.
Color Gallery
About.com's Graphic Design Guide, Judy Litt, has put together wonderful color galleries, such as the Web Color Gallery, Spot Color Gallery, and Color Gallery of Process Color Combinations. You'll find so many interesting color combinations primarily from people submitting them, and Judy encourages that. By clicking on a link with each one: for Web colors you'll find the RGB and hex codes; for process colors you'll find CMYK information; and for spot colors you'll find the PMS information. Great source of inspiration for color combinations and ideas. See also WebsiteTips.com's Color section for more sites related to color, color psychology, and more. [Color Gallery by Judy Litt, About.com's Graphic Design Guide. Thanks to Jay Dunning for suggesting the Color Gallery!]
CSS Beauty
A Web site showcasing CSS site designs. The site's purpose is to showcase designers' work and to act as a small portal to the CSS design community in the process providing its audience with a database of well designed CSS based Web sites from around the world. Sites are organized by date and also by category (business, entertainment, personal, photography, portal/magazine, sports, and other). [CSS Beauty Web site by Hector A. Giron.
CSS Drive
An entire Web site devoted to showing all-CSS Web sites. Galleries are categorized by types of layouts (two-column, three-column, mixed columns and rows), and by type (business, entertainment, organizations, personal, technology, webmasters, Web design firms).
CSS Zen Garden
A showcase of what can be done with the same content and style sheet but with different CSS rules applied. People submit their entries and those that are well done are included at the site. Lots of great inspiration can be found looking through these amazing design. [CSS Zen Garden Web site by Dave Shea, mezzoblue.]
Design Meltdown
An entire website that showcases designs. You'll find probably thousands of sites here, incredibly well organized by helpful topics - color usage (subcategories by individual colors), design elements and techniques (subcategories by individual design element, techniques used), types of sites (commercial, blogs, personal, individual industries), design trends, problems and solutions for columns, forms, forums, logo design, and much more. Site also has tutorials and tips on Web design. Fabulous site. [Website by Patrick McNeil, PMcNeil.com.]
Digitalthread Web Design Gallery
A wonderful gallery of beautifully designed websites. Organized by category and by date. Categories currently include: animation & game design, art & architecture sites, corporate design, design 'zines, editorial design, extra experimental, fashion, clothes & photos, Flash, industrial design & autos, movie and film sites, music sites, promotional design, sports design, standards based web design, xyz miscellaneous. [Section part of Digitalthread.]
HOW Now: Top Links, Design Inspiration/Education
HOW Design's current top 10 sites for design and inspiration. Annotated links that change regularly. Fun to visit what they're currently linking.
k10k, kaliber10000 {The Designer's Lunchbox}
"Global design forum for people who actually have something to say, and know how to do it. Updated weekly with a new issue by a new designer." Be forewarned - hours could pass without you realizing it when you visit this Web site. Amazing site with incredibly inspiring discussions, design examples, and explorations.
Letterhead Fonts Design Gallery
Hundreds of beautifully done designs and layouts using Letterhead Fonts. Designs are organized by portfolio, by most recent additions, by top ranked, by most viewed, by recent comments, and more. Beautiful designs for logos, posters, labels, and much more. Fabulous inspiration for Web site design, too. [Design Gallery by Letterhead Fonts.]
Logos Through The Years
An article that reviews the history of popular, well known logos and how they've evolved over the years - Nokia, Canon, Kodak, Bic, Castrol, Shell, McDonald's, Atari, Starbucks, and more, including links to their sites that have sections showing all their logos over time. Good inspiration for logo design. Related within WebsiteTips.com: Inspiration for Logo Design.[Article/tutorial dated 02/07/2008, by Kelly Guimont, for Manage This - The Extensis Community Blog.]
media inspiration
Another site at which hours could go by checking it all out with all its wonderfully creative, inspirational sites, articles, message boards, book of the month, site of the month, artist of the month (and more). Categorized navigation includes new additions, what's cool, top rated, favorites, more. They also have categorized listings of resources, too — fonts, flash, stock photos, software, Web building resources, links to tutorials, much more.
NetDiver Design Forte
by Carole Guevin. Many inspirational sites listed here by category with reviews given and screenshots. This is one of my favorite sites to explore and is created by one of the most talented individuals on the Web.

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Web Sites, Web Site Sections, Blogs on Creativity, Inspiration, Brainstorming, Managing Creativity

Creative Something
An entire blog devoted to creativity and design - improving your creativity, sparking creativity, dealing with creative blocks, finding creativity in everyday life, much more. [Blog by Tanner Christensen, Creative Something.]
Creativity Web, Resources for Creativity and Innovation
by Charles Cave, Sydney, Australia. An entire Web site devoted to creativity. Lots of articles, tips, resources. Excellent, helpful site.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Web site of Betty Edwards, author. The site is all about how to improve your creativity by learning how to draw or improve your drawing. By understanding more about creativity, your Web design projects may also be more creative, even if you're not an artist. Check out the sections on theory, the exercises, and anywhere else. Fascinating exploring here.
Enchanted Mind
by J.L. Read. Fascinating site exploring the mind, creativity, humor to stimulate creative thinking habits. “Creativity is an attitude that can be cultivated and expanded.”

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