The ultimate design inspiration library: A curated guide for creatives to fuel creativity

Introduction: Beyond the mood board – Building your creative engine

In the world of design and development, inspiration isn’t a lightning strike; it’s a system. For elite creative teams, inspiration is not found; it is built.

This guide moves beyond the simple mood board to detail the professional practice of building a “design inspiration library” – a strategic asset that serves as a creative engine for your entire team.

This is not just a folder of pretty pictures, but a curated, organised collection of solutions and ideas that anchors new projects, accelerates ideation, and provides a shared visual language to justify design decisions.

At Fruit Bowl Co, this philosophy is central to our process. This article serves as our definitive guide for the creative community and as a living document for our own team; an internal tool to codify our approach to creative excellence.

The most effective teams don’t wait for inspiration; they build systems to capture it continuously. This guide is the blueprint for that system.

The link library

For those who need to find the right tool quickly, here is a summary of our most trusted resources:

• For In-Depth Case Studies: Behance (https://www.behance.net/)
• For UI Trends & Snippets: Dribbble (https://dribbble.com/)
• For Web Innovation & Awards: Awwwards (https://www.awwwards.com/)
• For Real-World App Research: Mobbin (https://mobbin.com/)
• For Curated Web Design: A1.gallery (https://www.a1.gallery/)
• For a Directory of All Resources: UI Goodies (https://uigoodies.com/)

Part I: The Foundations – Platforms for Broad Spectrum Inspiration

Understanding the distinct roles of the major creative platforms is the first step in building a versatile inspiration library.

Behance – The Digital Portfolio for In-Depth Case Studies

Owned by Adobe, Behance is the industry’s platform for comprehensive project showcases. It’s where creatives present the full narrative behind their work, making it an unparalleled resource for understanding the “why” behind design decisions.

Use it to find inspiration for brand storytelling, campaign scope, and detailed problem-solving. Its integration with Adobe Creative Cloud solidifies its position as a professional-grade tool.

Dribbble – The Pulse of UI Trends and Visual Snippets

If Behance is for the full story, Dribbble is for the headline. It is a fast-paced community focused on “Shots”—small, digestible snapshots of design work.

This makes Dribbble the definitive pulse of the industry, where micro-trends in UI design, illustration, and animation are born. It is the go-to resource for component-level inspiration, visual trend-spotting, and microinteraction ideas.

Awwwards – The Pinnacle of Web Craft and Digital Innovation

Awwwards elevates the conversation to finished, live digital products. It is a prestigious competition recognising excellence in web design, development, and user experience, serving as a critical benchmark for what is possible on the web.

Its jury-based system creates a highly vetted stream of top-tier work, making it an invaluable resource for technical inspiration (advanced CSS, WebGL) and interactive storytelling.

Part II: The Curated Galleries – Where Quality Trumps Quantity

In an environment saturated with content, a reliable filter is invaluable. These platforms are built on “curation as a service,” saving you time and focus.

A1.gallery – The Connoisseur’s Collection of Web Excellence

A1.gallery is the minimalist’s answer to inspiration overload. It is a clean, beautifully designed, and highly curated space dedicated to showcasing the best-designed live websites.

The selection criteria are rigorous, prioritising strong visuals, smooth interactions, and exceptional user experience. Its precise filtering by technology, style, and category makes it a powerful tool for targeted research.

UI Goodies – The Designer’s Curated Toolbox

UI Goodies operates as a meta-resource—a meticulously organised directory of other high-quality design resources. It saves designers time by having already vetted and categorised the best tools on the web, from icons and illustrations to colour and typography tools.

When you need a specific type of resource but don’t know where to start, UI Goodies is the answer.

Part III: The Specialist’s Toolkit – Mastering the Details

Great digital products are built from a symphony of well-executed details. These specialist tools help creatives perfect the essential components of design.

Mastering Typography – Finding the Perfect Voice

• Typewolf: The definitive resource for seeing typography used on real websites.
• Fonts in Use: A scholarly archive of typography for deep research into specific typefaces.
• FontPair & Typespiration: Tools for quickly exploring and generating font combinations, primarily using Google Fonts.

Harnessing Colour – Palettes That Communicate

• Adobe Color: The industry standard for generating palettes based on color theory and extracting themes from images.
• Khroma: An AI-powered tool that generates personalised colour palettes based on your preferences.
• Coolors: A fast, simple tool for rapid brainstorming and palette exploration.
• Design Seeds: Curated colour palettes based on beautiful nature and still-life photography.

Perfecting Interaction – The Art of Micro-Moments

Great design responds to the user. Microinteractions – the small moments of feedback and delight – are what elevate a user experience from functional to memorable.

Think of Netflix’s “Skip Intro” button or Gmail’s “Undo Send” feature; they solve a user pain point with an elegant, almost invisible solution.

For curated collections of these design details, resources like UI Garage and Little Big Details are excellent references.

Part IV: The Vanguard – Exploring Creative Technology

To stay relevant, a modern agency must look to the future of digital experiences. These resources are for creatives who want to push boundaries with creative coding, 3D graphics, and generative art.

• Codrops: The leader in creative development resources, publishing cutting-edge tutorials and experiments.
• Three.js & p5.js: Foundational JavaScript libraries for creating 3D graphics (Three.js) and accessible 2D generative art (p5.js) on the web.
• The Book of Shaders: A step-by-step guide to shaders, the small programs that create stunning visual effects.
• GitHub: A massive, open-source library of inspiration. Curated lists like “Awesome Creative Coding” provide hundreds of links to tools and projects.

Part V: The Workflow – Integrating Inspiration into Your Process

Having great resources is only half the battle. The key is integrating them into a coherent workflow. Here is a guide to using the right tool at the right time.

• Phase 1: Discovery & Strategy
  In this initial phase, focus on understanding the competitive landscape and defining the brand’s voice.
  • Primary Tools: Use Behance to analyse competitor case studies and Specialist Tools to establish the initial colour psychology and typographic direction.
  • Secondary Tools: Use Dribbble and A1.gallery for high-level moodboarding, Awwwards to identify tech trends, and Mobbin for a preliminary competitor feature audit.
• Phase 2: UX & Wireframing
  This phase is about structuring the user journey and information architecture.
  • Primary Tool: Mobbin is essential here for deep-diving into real-world user flows, screen patterns, and established UX solutions from leading apps.
  • Secondary Tool: Behance can offer insights into user flows from its detailed case studies.
• Phase 3: UI & Visual Design
  Here, the focus shifts to aesthetic execution and visual polish.
  • Primary Tools: Dribbble is your go-to for specific UI components and micro-trends. Awwwards and A1.gallery provide the benchmark for visual excellence. Mobbin is crucial for referencing established UI patterns, and Specialist Tools are used to finalise colour palettes and font pairings.
  • Secondary Tool: Behance can provide inspiration for comprehensive design systems.
• Phase 4: Development & Interaction
  This final phase is about bringing the design to life with motion and interactivity.
  • Primary Tool: Awwwards is the best resource for deconstructing advanced animations, transitions, and innovative web technologies.
  • Secondary Tools: Dribbble, Mobbin, and A1.gallery are great for finding inspiration for simpler, polished microinteractions and transitions.

The Research Engine – Deconstructing Real-World UX with Mobbin

Among all tools, Mobbin stands out for grounding inspiration in reality. It is an indispensable research engine containing a massive, searchable library of over 500,000 screenshots and user flows from the world’s best mobile and web applications.

Instead of guessing how to design an onboarding flow or a settings screen, you can see how hundreds of leading companies have already solved that exact problem. It is a game-changer for understanding established design patterns and complete user journeys.

Building the System – Your Agency’s Shared Brain

To truly leverage these resources, an agency must build a shared, internal inspiration library.

• Choose a Tool: Use a shared space like a Figma library, MyMind, or Notion.
• Standardise Tagging: A library is only as good as its searchability. Establish a clear tagging system (e.g., component:button, pattern:onboarding).
• Mandate the “Why” Note: When adding an item, include a short note explaining why it is inspiring. This forces critical thinking over passive collection.
• Schedule a Weekly Review: Foster a culture of learning with a brief, 15-minute “Inspiration Roundup” each week to share compelling finds.

Conclusion: From Inspiration to Originality

A design inspiration library, built with intention, is a springboard for originality. True creativity is combinatorial – it emerges from connecting existing ideas in novel ways.

A well-maintained library stocks the mind with a diverse array of solutions and patterns. When a new problem arises, this deep well of knowledge allows the creative mind to draw upon a richer palette of possibilities, leading to work that is not only effective and beautiful but also truly original.