Inspiration

I wear a lot of hats, so the sites that interest me fall into a variety of categories.

Website Design

Endicott Studios… Beautiful images, beautiful stories…

CSS, Design Inspiration. One of my very favorite websites to visit now and again, especially when I need inspiration, has been the CSS Zen Garden site. Since 2004, designers have been sending in beautiful designs that demonstrate the flexibility of CSS. The content of the site never changes, only the way it looks, from a movie theater to a garden, a sci-fi thriller theme to a daguerreotype. The brain behind CSS Zen Garden, Dave Shea, wrote a book about the beauty of CSS that’s pretty important reading for anyone who wants to design beautiful websites that people can actually use. As of this writing, CSS Zen Garden is down, but I hope it comes back. Dave Shea thinks it’s still relevant and so do I. Based on the comments I read when I Google for news about when Zen Garden might be back, so do many designers–all of them, like me, not quite sure we’re up to that standard yet, not every site every time, but we’re working toward it. And that’s a beautiful thing. Dave Shea’s blog is the absolutely gorgeous mezzoblue. (And thumbnails of the old Zen Garden designs are hidden away here too. Now that I’ve found it, I intend to haunt it until he gives me back my inspiration. If he does.

Blogging, Website Templates. This website is based on the WordPress engine. WordPress is a wonder and I’m completely sold on it. Anyone who wants a beautiful website can make it happen all by themselves. A quick installation (and many hosting companies offer automated set-up so you don’t have to get into the guts of things), and it’s time to go theme shopping. Take a look at the many, many free themes available from smart designers who like to share and choose one (after spending far too many hours going, “That one! No, no, I want that one!”). If you know any CSS and/or basic HTML and/or basic PHP, you’ll find that you can customize it in a lot of different ways very easily. The best part, you don’t HAVE to know those things to post news, your opinion, or pictures of your kids in their halloween costumes. And, if you don’t have your own website, you can put a blog up on the WordPress site for free!

One caveat: Do a little research. Some WordPress themes have code embedded in them that might do things you don’t want your website to do in sneaky ways. I believe the honchos at WordPress have removed any hinky themes from the template site, but it’s not hard to do a quick Google search on the safest, least hacked, best designer, or what have you. Just to be safe. The WordPress Theme Site.

Excellent WordPress Themes. Chris Pearson gives good advice. He calls his blog “The best damn blog on the planet.” He might even be right. He also dishes up perfectly validated WordPress themes, SEO tutorials, and a dozen other bites of tasty Internet pie.

CSS. Whenever I’m stumped about code, I take a gander at A List Apart’s archives, usually to find that they’ve already solved the problem (often a year or two before I thought of it).

Code. W3Schools are a boon to designers, wanna be designers–anyone who ever wanted to roll up their sleeves and figure out the code–or crazy people like me who, once upon a time said, “I could do that!” They provide a great resource for code snippets, loads of tutorials, and even a little sandbox where you can tinker with code and immediately see what your tinkering broke. Changed. I meant changed.

CSS, Code. Alsacreations is a nifty website that provides cool tutorials for website building. I like them as much for the lovely citrus header as for their easy to understand lessons.

CSS, Code. Listamatic is the CSS Zen Garden for navigation. Designers from all over the world have donated their take on simple list navigation, both horizontal and vertical. Listamatic and its siblings are provided by Russ Weakley of Max Design.

Standards and Practices. No talk of design is complete without mentioning the Web Standards Group. Like art, web design is best when it works within the limits of its form and transcends them using the right tools. The Web Standards Group “promotes web standards and best practices,” a good resource if you don’t want to be left behind.

Publishing

E-Books. A post about inspiration would be incomplete without listing the teleread site. Teleread lets me know what’s going on in the world of e-books. Since I consider them pretty important, it’s a good thing to skim. The contributors are prolific (most of them, I’m one, but not so much with the prolific), so skimming is all I can do some days, but if I want to know the latest news about Amazon’s Kindle, the IADP, or how not to brick a Sony, that’s where I go. How is that inspirational? It’s always good to know what the limits are before I get in over my head.

E-Books. I also head over to MobileRead. MobileRead’s forums provide a lot of great chatter about e-books, their books section provides some great reading, and they often have the latest e-book news before anyone else.

Print Books. PersonaNonData keeps me up to date with the world of publishing, often inciting me to more “I could do that!” than is currently wise.

Creativity

Endicott Studios gives me candy. My kind, anyway. Beautiful images, beautiful stories, and information about more stories, more images, and all things mythic. It’s probably the one site I would be lost without.

And talking about stories, we must, of course, talk about With Intent to Commit Horror, my very own Undead Rat’s website. He’s been compiling the information about horror authors, horror books, and horrid websites listed on that website for years (thank everything you believe in that you don’t have to listen to him talk in his sleep) and it just keeps on growing. The blog provides links to great content on other sites and the book lists provide information on what you really really don’t want to be reading in bed just before lights out… unless you’re just like him. Then all bets are off.

There are far too many really wonderful websites to list, but I leave you with one last one. Mine. My other one, that is. Drollerie Press publishes amazing fiction in every genre in both print and electronic formats. Our first print book will be pre-released on the site this month. Still Life with Devils, by the incomparable mystery author Deborah Grabien, (author of 12 novels, not including the upcoming Kinkaid Series) is a freaky supernatural thriller that is seriously hard to put down (don’t believe me? Ask Publisher’s Weekly; they suggest a sequel!). We also have a couple of e-novels coming this month, Alien Dreams from John B. Rosenman and Pixie Warrior from Rachael de Vienne. We’ll have more print and electronic works, both full length and short stories, coming soon.

Take a look at the resources page for great free fiction reading, and if you’re into both good and free, check out the stories from our authors.

Got a great site about design, art, books, or anything else? Drop a comment. I’d love to go check it out.