Here at the Ohlmann Group, our award-winning design team works to create memorable, inspiring brand experiences for our wonderful clients. From website and social media design to print collateral, animation, logos, videos, outdoor advertisements, and everything in between, our exceedingly talented team knows how to get the job done.
But have you ever wondered how these creative folks find artistic inspiration? I had the chance to talk with two of our incredibly creative designers, Jason Hart and Meghen Welly, about their all-time favorite online creative resources.
Webdesign Inspiration
Meghen calls this site “an amazing resource for what’s going on in the web world.” Webdesign Inspiration sends out a monthly newsletter with the top 10 websites of the month, providing a unique mix of business, portfolio, product, and many more industries, giving graphic designers like Meghen a wealth of inspiration from a variety of industry styles.
Adobe Color CC
Color is one of the most important aspects of design inspiration, and Meghen is one of our resident color masters. She’s designed stunning color palettes for many client projects, and here’s one of her secrets: Adobe Color. She says, “Whenever I’m about to begin a new project, I like to search Adobe Color for palette inspiration. It’s a community generated site, so people can share palettes they’ve created, or you can create your own.” Adobe Color also syncs to Adobe programs like Photoshop and Indesign, allowing designers to gain instant access to incredible color palettes.
Blog Spoon Graphics
Blog Spoon Graphics is another great resource for designers. When you subscribe, you receive weekly e-blasts chock full of tutorials, free fonts, and design packages. Chris Spooner, who runs the site, records tutorials that are fun and easy to follow.
Canva
Jason recommends Canva’s design school page for its helpful articles on all aspects of design and advertising. His two favorite articles on the site are on finding a great color palette and font pairing. Canva is also a great free resource for making quick and easy infographics and graphics for social media posts.
Unsplash
Need to use a royalty-free image for a blog post or social media but hate the look of cheesy stock photos? Meghen recommends Unsplash, a community generated photography resource. All of the images are free to use, and the site also sends a weekly e-blast with inspiring photos.
Creative Market
Both Meghen and Jason use Creative Market as a great source for finding design products that can help spur inspiration and speed up the design process. Creative Market offers tons of fonts, textures, vector objects and presentation mockups at a low cost, and even sends freebies every week.
Jason and Meghen both use Pinterest as a source of finding design inspiration and creative references. Pinterest is handy for graphic designers because it offers a search engine to find very specific keywords and filter through current and comprehensive creative references.
Meghen says, “It’s also a great place to save content/pages I find so I don’t forget about them. I like to browse Pinterest when I’m starting out a new project to get ideas on style, paper, layout, colors, etc.”
She adds, “It’s great because with every new project or idea, my own boards grow and evolve with new content, and it’s nice to be able to reference them whenever I’m feeling uninspired.”
Meghen even shared a few of her favorite boards for website and design inspiration, which are filled with vibrant colors and out-of-the-box designs.
So, if you’re looking to rebrand with a new website, logo, or fresh marketing materials, our award-winning design team is happy to help. We’re a full-service marketing and advertising agency in Dayton that cares about delivering meaningful, measurable results for clients. Contact us today to meet our friendly team and learn more about what we do.
