In the ever-evolving design world, creative professionals like yourself should stay up-to-date with the latest tools, inspiration, and resources. Fortunately, today’s digital landscape offers many innovative platforms and websites that can greatly enhance your workflow and creativity.
In this blog, we’ve compiled the 15 best websites for designers this year. From providing sources of inspiration to offering powerful collaboration tools, these websites can become your go-to resources for all things design in 2023. Bookmark them now and elevate your design game!
1. Muzli Inspiration
As a designer, it’s normal to have a creative block now and then. Good thing there’s Muzli Inspiration, a free Google Chrome extension that curates design news and trends from various web sources like Behance and Designer News.
It provides inspiration for graphic design, tech, typography, illustration, photography, and more. It can also replace your default startup page—whenever you launch your browser, you’ll immediately see a feed of news articles and design trends.
Moreover, it offers a suite of other resources for designers, such as a color palette generator and an online marketplace for user interface (UI) kits, fonts, and website templates, among other design essentials.
2. One Page Love
If you specifically need design inspirations for landing pages, One Page Love has all the answers. It curates and showcases one-page website designs for different platforms, such as WordPress, Shopify, and Elementor. The collection consists of free and paid templates, each including a screenshot, live demo, and download links.
It also offers a free newsletter subscription where you can get direct links to website inspiration, UI components, templates, dot com domains, and design and development finds.
3. Mobbin
With nearly 9 million mobile apps available today, it’s become harder and harder to stand out in the digital space. Mobbin offers a solution to this problem. It hosts a user experience (UX) and UI mobile design library that provides insights into how popular mobile apps are designed and structured.
It offers two plans: Free and Pro. Under the free plan, you can browse up to eight latest apps and three collections and have limited search results. On the other hand, the $8 Pro plan offers unlimited access to apps, flows, search results, and collections.
4. Google Design
This free site can help you in numerous ways. First, its Material Design open-source system provides a framework for creating products that are functional and visually appealing. It also includes guidelines for typography, color, layout, and motion.
Second, Google Design hosts events and online communities where you can connect with other designers and share ideas. Finally, it showcases the work of designers worldwide to inspire and educate.
5. Dribbble
This online platform and community benefits designers and brands. For one, it allows you to present your portfolios and design projects to a broader audience and receive feedback from fellow designers. It can also help you discover the latest design trends, innovative techniques, and various design aesthetics to fuel your creativity.
Moreover, Dribbble also functions as a job portal. It allows brands to post job listings, freelance projects, and employment opportunities. You can browse apply for positions and get hired directly through your Dribbble profile. You can also get more portfolio views when you avail of Dribbble Pro, which costs $8 a month.
6. Awwwards
If you want to see the best web designs, look no further than Awwwards—an online platform and awards program that recognizes outstanding website design and creativity. With an expert panel of judges assessing websites based on various design and usability criteria, this site offers a benchmark for what constitutes exceptional web design.
You may submit your work for a standard rate of $65 per submission. The site also has plans that offer discounts for submissions, courses, and access to exclusive content. Winning an award or being featured on the Awwwards website can also help you attract potential clients, employers, and collaborators.
7. Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine is another great hub of resources for web designers and developers. This free online publication provides the latest news, articles, and tutorials on web design, development, and UX. Experts in the field provide these resources to help web designers and developers learn and improve their skills.
For more in-depth discussions and learnings, you can join Smashing Magazine’s online workshops and conferences. You can get discounted tickets if you avail of a Smashing Membership, which starts at $5 per month.
8. Figma
This free cloud-based design platform allows you to create, prototype, and collaborate on designs in real time. It’s one of the most popular design tools on the market used by designers of all levels—from students to freelancers to enterprise teams.
One of Figma’s best features is its built-in version control, which can help you and your team easily track design changes and revert to previous versions if needed. It also offers powerful prototyping tools that allow you to test designs with users and gain feedback before implementing them.
For more advanced features, you can avail any of its premium plans starting at $12 a month.
9. Adobe Color
One of the best resources for graphic designers is a trustworthy color palette generator like Adobe Colors. You can choose from various color harmony rules, such as analogous, complementary, and triadic harmonies. You can also use this free website to explore color palettes from other designers.
Since it’s integrated with other Adobe Creative Cloud applications, you can easily apply your chosen color palettes to your designs without switching between applications.
10. InVision
If you work remotely, InVision is a great website to collaborate with your team in real time. It allows you to ideate, execute, and track projects and comment on each other’s designs. It can also help you test mobile app prototypes and hand off designs to developers. You can export your works in various formats, such as Sketch, Photoshop, and XD.
Aside from its free plan, you can avail of its premium offers to access more advanced features such as enhanced security, unlimited team members and guests, and priority support.
11. Infogram
Creating infographics and data reports is often tedious and time-consuming. For this reason, consider using Infogram—a free data visualization and infographics tool that can help you turn numbers into visual content. It’s especially helpful if you work in marketing, media, education, government, and other industries and sectors heavily relying on data reports.
It also showcases examples from existing users so you can gain inspiration for your own infographics. Aside from its free plan, you can avail of its premium plans starting at $19 a month. They provide access to more templates, map types, icons, editing tools, data analytics services, and other design resources.
12. Material UI
This website offers a set of ready-made UI components that adhere to Google’s Material Design guidelines. You use these components to ensure visual consistency throughout your app, streamline your workflow, and reduce issues and discrepancies.
Material UI is also rigorously tested for cross-browser compatibility, ensuring your UI will work consistently across major web browsers. Moreover, its components can adapt to different screen sizes and devices, making it easier for you to create responsive designs. Some of the top companies that use this website are Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon.
13. Pexels
Part of your job as a designer is using high-quality visuals, such as images and videos, for your projects. However, acquiring these assets can be time-consuming and expensive. Fortunately, Pexels offers a vast and diverse library of free-to-use stock photos and videos. You can browse and download these assets for your projects without worrying about copyright issues.
If you have a knack for photography, you can also upload your photos and contribute to a large community of designers and marketers.
14. Humaaans
This open-source library by Mexican designer Pablo Stanley offers human illustrations available in different poses, skin tones, and activities. You can customize them to your liking and use them to communicate ideas more effectively than text or icons alone. This repository is available in Sketch, Figma, InVision Studio, and Adobe XD.
It’s generally free, but you can donate a fair amount to the artist to further support their work. Stanley also offers more free illustration packs, such as Miroodles, Transhumans, and Open Peeps.
15. Fontjoy
You’ve likely struggled with selecting the right font combinations for your projects. To resolve this problem, use Fontjoy to automate the font pairing process. You can experiment with different font pairings and customize them to match your specific project requirements. This flexibility allows for creative freedom and the ability to fine-tune fonts to fit a particular design concept.
This free website can help you save time and ensure aesthetic consistency across your projects.
16. Appy Pie Design
Appy Pie Design is a versatile platform, offering designers intuitive tools such as their vision board maker to effortlessly create stunning visuals. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or an aspiring enthusiast, Appy Pie Design provides a user-friendly interface coupled with a rich feature set to bring your creative ideas to life.
From crafting eye-catching logos to designing engaging social media posts, Appy Pie Design offers a comprehensive suite of design capabilities. With customizable templates and a vast library of graphics, fonts, and colors, you have the flexibility to express your creativity without constraints.
Design With Ease
Creativity and skills are indispensable in the design world. However, you need to do more as a designer to soar. Use the best websites for designers above to significantly streamline your workflows, enhance your portfolio, and secure more lucrative opportunities.
Spiralytics is equipped with web design tools and certifications to help brands stand out with their websites. Our web design services blend creativity with strategic thinking to craft websites that captivate and convert. Whether you’re starting from scratch or rebranding online, we have you covered.
Contact us to learn more.
