Article in Design, Under the Hood categories.

Our Top 6 Sites for Design Inspiration

This week we're exploring portfolios, events, retail and more. Love the energy and simplicity that so many of this week's sites display

Every week at Fueled, our London-based lead designer Rob Palmer shares a handful of inspirational websites with our teams in New York and Chicago. This weekly email acts like a virtual water cooler, encouraging us to congregate across time zones and discuss what brands and blogs are doing to push new trends in web design.

This week we're exploring portfolios, events, retail and more. Love the energy and simplicity that so many of this week's sites display, and more than one is ready to aid your hardcore summer distraction, so gear up!

Cole Townsend

Cole Townsend is a web and visual designer, and a student at Williams College in Massachusetts. His personal portfolio is clutter free, using brighter versions of pastels and illustrations to depict his past work and the various sections of the site. The simplicity of the design and straightforward flow of the site makes it enjoyable to flip through his past work.

Cole Townsend

The Secret Handshake

The Secret Handshake is an online resource full of advice for design students and young designers as they search for jobs. With advice from dozens of top industry creatives about resumes, the application and portfolios, it's well on its way to help inspire and empower young creatives to make the transition to professional. The advice is organized among these three categories, which then displays a grid of black and white photographs of the person giving advice. As you scroll over an image, the tile becomes a cheery yellow square with the individual's name, clicking reveals their piece of advice, twitter, website and a link to the quote. We love the bright and bold design, and how manny different perspectives there are.

The Secret Handshake

Served

Served is a ping-pong competition for creative agency types in Manchester, England. The proceeds go to charity, and they're not just interested in straight competition, but also in having a beer and having fun. We love the detailed hand-drawn background with animations which enliven the page.

Served

Your Tour

You may have seen clips of the Tour de France before, but nothing like this. Your Tour integrates Google products from roadmaps, streetview, YoutTube and Google Plus to allow you to discover the main stages in an immersive experience. Created in honor of the 100th edition of the race, the site also features historic stages, including the very first one in 1903, and old film reel for the first international Tour in 1954. We love the rich experience it manages to create, with popups encouraging you to scroll faster or show you the sights as they pass on a map or old film highlights of cheering crowds lining the road.

Your Tour

Sia

Sia's great use of images is key to this engaging site. From a truckload of dirt-covered potatoes to a bag of crisps they show their production process in detail. The appealing layout and fresh design keep you exploring and learning more.

Sia

Juliana Bicycles

The first producers of mountain bikes designed specifically for women, Juliana launched in 1999. The site is beautiful and serene from this opening image of a female mountain biker in a field, drenched in warm sunlight. The site showcases thedifferent bikes and brand story with effective and unobtrusive navigation.

Juliana Bicycles

That’s all for this week! We're passionate about inspiring design and sharing these great resources with you. Please share this post with your friends and if you have any favorite sites, don’t hesitate to share them with us in the comments.

Check back next week for more design inspiration from Fueled.

By Merrill Fabry