“Web designers and graphic designers are always looking for new sources of design inspiration. Of course, many of us turn to CSS galleries, and there are even more sources of offline inspiration. Personally, I find the work in many Flickr groups to be another excellent source of inspiration. Aside from the billions of photos on Flickr, there are also some groups that have been established to showcase the work of designers. Here is a look at 99 of them according to category (about half of them are general graphic design groups). Below the link to each group you’ll see the number of members and the number of items (pictures, graphics, screenshots, etc.) that have been submitted to the group, plus I have included part of the group description as listed by the moderator.”

“Writing your blog should be a fun way to stretch your mind and stay connected to trends, friends, and the greater world, not another computer task that takes far too long to get done. But that’s exactly what it can feel like if it takes you more time to find your post ideas, tweak your markup, and make everything look right than to actually get your thoughts down. Being somewhat experienced at this blogging thing, your Lifehacker editors have pinpointed a few tools and tricks that make our posts go faster and smoother. After the jump, we round up 10 of them.”

“Are there existential dilemmas in Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends? Does Brad Bird’s oeuvre contain creepy Objectivist subtext? Is there a Lorenzo Music/Bill Murray Ghostbusters-Garfield conspiracy? Were Paw Paw Bears simply evolved Snorks with a totemic religion? Or maybe Scooby and Shaggy, like, totally smoked weed, man. These and other questions require more than careful analysis. They demand over-analyzation.”

“This application prototype is part of the Master thesis ‘The Form of Facts and Figures,’ developed by Christian Behrens in the Interface Design program at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. Its goal is the development of of a design pattern taxonomy for the field of data visualization and information design.”

“Focus is something of a novelty these days. We’ve got cellphones for texting and calls, IM, Twitter, Email, RSS feeds, Facebook, Myspace… the list goes on and on. If you don’t have ADD before you start working online, it seems it’s almost inevitable thanks to these inputs. If you’re a web worker who uses the Internet for the majority of the day, you’re especially at risk for losing focus.

Focus is something that must be fought for. It’s not something that automatically switches on when you want to. You have to make sure your surroundings are perfect for working if you want to be focused. Here’s a few ways I’ve found this to work…”

“I use Google Analytics, and I noticed that their left nav has an interesting characteristic: instead of each option being boxed in a clickable rectangle, there is a one pixel notch in each corner. It’s not necessarily a curved corner, but it is a little softer than a normal box. I would’ve naturally thought that if someone is going to use background images to create a capsule effect, they would have used anti-aliased images. But upon closer inspection, no background images were used at all.”

“Regular readers of my articles know that I have no qualms or fear of offering criticism. Criticism is a vital component in what we do and in how we learn. In fact, critical evaluation is mandatory in design work. Without approaching, or at least finishing, every step of our work with a critical eye the results are likely worthless. And we’ve much to learn from what design criticism can teach us. Yet the more articles and criticism responses I read, the more I’m led to believe that too many designers misunderstand criticism.”

The purpose of the Web Standards Design + Development group is to form a strong network of individuals who have taken the initiative to become craftsmen of their trade. Today it is a list of names, tomorrow it will be a force for good…

As of this moment, there are only five spots left for the VizThink Austin gathering happening April 30!

And you can still sign up for the Dave Gray/Karl Gude workshops happening in Chicago and New York the first week of May.

“I’d like to encourage designers to open their mind and consider using some of the other typefaces that are often pre-installed on computers these days. There really are some great choices that are being completely ignored. Granted, not every user is going to have them, but those who do will get an enhanced experience, and those who don’t will be just fine, so long as you specify appropriate alternates (as in MOSe).

Let us compile a list of useable typefaces that we can count on being installed at least some of the time — as well as good alternates for them that are more reliable. Here’s a few I came up with. I think you’ll notice that there are not only some great faces here, but even some that are considered classics or essentials.”

Just what it says.

A blog dedicated to quality, not quantity… …oh, and title sequences and their respective designers. And maybe some other stuff.

Someday.

Take a stab at identifying 34 different fonts in this online quiz.

“Visually, we wanted to make something that didn’t ape current design tropes - the boring, over-used and essentially art-less ‘web 2.0 look’ of bright palletes, gradient fills and rounded corners - but had a more classical view, as befitting something a little more grown up. Richard Spencer Powell said the magazine design draws from modernism, of course (especially North and Mittel European heritage) but also looks further back into the early 20thC, and beyond the simple serifs and vogue for ornamentation, but look at the engravings, section headers, cartographic styles etc.”

“Grid-based layouts have become really popular among web designers over the last year… However, I ran into a problem when coding grid-based layouts. How can I be sure my grid is maintained from the original mockup to the final coded version? When I coded my first grid-based layout, I found myself regularly taking screenshots of the site and comparing them with my original grid in Photoshop. There had to be an easier way.

Enter GridFox. GridFox is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It’s easy to customize, allowing you to create the exact grid you designed your layout around.”