Inspiration

Hello, welcome to inspect a podcast about web design and development. My name is Ajay and wouldn't use you choice. Okay? Okay, good.

All right. Yeah, not bad. Do you want to let us know what we're talking about today? Yes today, we're gonna be talking about inspiration and so whether that's design inspiration or technical coding inspiration Yeah, we're gonna talk about the things that inspire us to create our websites and our coding practices and things like that And so what I've done is I'm gonna be a quick fire episode and what I've done is I kind of drafted about five or six questions on a fire at that you and Well, do once I've got your answer kind of you know I'll just add on my answer to them as well or my opinions and use so and let's get into it and So question number one is obviously gonna be where you go for your design inspiration.

I Think most of my design inspiration as most people will probably come from dribble I tend to go to dribble. I used to go to dribble quite a lot I used to post on there as well when I used to do a lot more design work But I don't do as much these days So I just jump in every now and then go to dribble and I tend to go there when I'm looking for inspiration on a particular thing rather than just to get sort of blanket inspiration across every sort of type of design so for example if I'm designing like a shopping basket widget or you know a chat window then I might just go and dribble and I'll just see what the sort trends are You know if people are doing something particularly new or you know is the trend leaning towards a particular color or a particular sort of Style and then yeah, I'll normally find two or three examples of something that I like maybe take some screenshots And then it bring those into sketch and use those as a bit of a mood board to Give me like a starting point and then I do the similar sort of thing on behinds as well But I think when I'm going on behind system is more general browsing because Obviously dribbles just got these like small shots, right? Just small bits of UI without any real context whereas the hands is more like case studies about certain projects So I tend to spend a lot more time on beyond reading over the projects and you know The reason for the choices and then scrolling through there's a long post and seeing how they got to their final Yeah, you know the final output. Yeah Yeah, so in terms of design.

Yeah, that's the main main place really a trouble cool cool So I don't really use dribble myself. So the behinds is the one that you've mentioned there That's one that I actually do go to so you know, I actually kind of yeah screenshot things from there And then I'll create a move as well. So I do some kind of thing to you do, but I've never actually used dribble I don't know why I'm just never kind of gone that way But behinds works for me and some of the other sites out there that I've been using would be like the awards or con website So I'm all doing kind of web design and things like that So I look at that quite a lot to pick up trends and you know various different things You're quite a lot of varying sort of approaches to web design on there. So I do tend to go and look at that quite a bit You have a look at competitors.

So for example the agency you're working for would they have any sort of like direct competitors In the industry and would you ever look at you know their kind of work or case studies or portfolio things like that? I think we don't really look at competing agency work But when we get a client then we will ask the client who their competitors are And then we'll do our research based on that. So, you know, if we're doing a medical client Then we'll go look at other medical websites for example and just get some trends there One thing I used to do I don't do it very very much these days But there was a website called template monster where you could you buy and download Website templates and they used to have really good categorization of all the templates So if you did have a client of a particular industry, you could you know, chances are that template monster had that that industry on their categories and You know, they used to have a massive library of design some of them were a bit basic and a lot of them They look very similar where these just like a color or a front was changed But you know, it was a quick way to get some quick inspiration on Sites that are in a similar industry when you haven't necessarily got a competitor's site to look at if you know what I mean, right? Okay, that's cool.

Yeah, I I used to use that myself back in the day and I think it's kind of evolved nice all day I find myself going to think for us on the in Votto They've got a really good categorization on there and I tend to find really really good looking You know, whether it's like a HTML sort of like landing page concept or a full website theme Involves with some really really good. So I'm like off the shelf templates, which I tend to go to and get some ideas from so I think that's probably the big one now I do like that one. Do you ever find yourself looking at some of these? I know one ago we kind of got ourselves into blockchain and you know And all these blockchain style websites were like creeping up everywhere They were following this kind of trend which is the next thing on move on to But do you ever find yourself looking at these kind of like text sites like tied Monzo and Airbnb?

They kind of like create or invent a new style and all of a sudden everyone's kind of following that kind of trend So whether you've got you know big and bold sort of like typefaces and bright colors or whether you're going for minimal kind of approach with a lot of white space I'm finding these kind of cool brands or tech brands very very inspirational for myself and the work that I'm doing for my clients Do you find yourself kind of leaning that way at any kind of moment when we're looking at a project or yes? Yeah, I suppose so like I said, I don't sort of actively go out looking for them But I do tend to if I do notice something out in the wild and I sometimes might bookmark it for later or a text screenshot Just to add to like a little library There's a couple of brands which I used to follow on on dribble as well because dribble has team accounts I think it was a box.com. They had some cool stuff drop box as well Their team does some cool like they have a style because I don't really like drop boxes now But I used to like their sort of previous branding They used to have an illustrator called Ryan Putnam on their team And he's designed a lot of the icons and then there was a big trend around that a couple years ago The campaign wanted they've got some cool stuff and you know brands like MailChimp Evernote they've all seem to have these team accounts on dribble where their own designers and UX people and illustrators are all part of their team So although those people are in uploading to their own profiles individually You can see like a bit of a theme between them as well where obviously they're getting influenced by the brand they work for Yeah, so some there's loads of ever known design is pretty good on I like their their style Yeah, I would say there's quite a few Facebook designers as well and they've got a whole I think they've got the URL Facebook Design where you can go and sort of view the whole their design guidelines at their style Yeah, yeah, I'm finding myself you know Just recently I took a lot of inspiration from the tide the tide banking website because I opened a business account with them and Their website is just really really clean bold and you know, it's really really nice to look at and When I open my account this semi a nice little package which I recorded on Instagram I might just share it on this on this podcast as well at some point I get link out there or something but it's really cool how it lends itself to that It's print and packaging and things like that It's just really really cool, but you're finding myself following these sort of tech brands getting a lot of inspiration from them Talking about trends quickly We're seeing trends to be ever-growing web design I remember when web people in O kind of kicked off all those years ago, you know, you can remember what that look like and and it's kind of evolved now So you've got in a very bootstrappy kind of like look and feel to websites as well these days and others or frameworks of people using those styles kind of like push through so there's not it's kind of minimal so they're letting the actual framework do the actual talking and They think like a minimal kind of approach to the actual, you know changes They're making to the actual framework itself and then you've got influence from like, you know, brands like Apple We've seen that a lot now in apps native apps and things like that and even androids You know apps for Android are using the Apple kind of styling as well. You've got flat design Which is a major thing.

I think last year in the year before it was pretty big it still is now I think And then I think right now the one that I've kind of like picked up on is big bright and bold Like, you know bright colors massive headings large like faces and things like that You're talking about trends in just a little while ago. Do you follow these trends? You know, I wouldn't say religiously, but let me put it this way. Like how close do you follow trends or do you find yourself kind of?

You know wanting to start start your own one and kind of carry on with that or you know I think it's quite important to follow the trends as well. I'm not you know It'd be nice to be a trend setter, but I think to be a trend set to be a Trans setter trailblazer as well as something you're gonna need a platform of exposure So I think it's gonna be quite hard for an individual who doesn't have a huge following or doesn't work for a big particular brand To do that and a lot of the trends are gonna be coming out of these sort of all-star designers or big design lead firms and companies So you know, it is companies like Dropbox and is companies like Evernote and like you said Monzo and Tide, especially the UK Monzo Who are sort of leading the way with these trends and you know, I think it's only natural to not to copy them But at least just take inspiration from them and you know, if if When the world started becoming flat design it spread throughout the whole web fairly quick I remember when you know, everything had like angled shadows and like 45 degrees shadows elongated shadows That trend came really quick And then it also sort of died off really quick as well So I wouldn't sort of base my whole product on the current trends if I was designing something cuz trends do obviously come and go pretty quick You need to sort of pick out the fundamentals and the foundations of of what a trend is really based on And then and then use those some You know, you know, make sure that you're thinking about like color theory and typography and and just general like data flow of information on a page Rather than oh, okay now all my buttons need to have this 10 10 pixel border radius or you know My drop shadow needs to be you know, 20 pixel blur. That's what things gonna definitely come and go There's a lot more important things to think about than just the visuals Maybe that's just my developer hat thinking as well. I think if if you ask someone who was a primarily a designer They may they may have a very different opinion.

So oh, yeah, no, I agree with you I come from a design background. So for me, you know, I do spend quite a lot of time looking at these you know These little details so you know the mouth padding around content within a container a negative space White space is something I've kind of latched on to recently and I picked up a lot of that from inspiration from these tech websites I mentioned clients that seem to like it though They seem to get a little bit in wheat and so asking questions about the white space and they like how do we fill the white space up? And can we put some images in their background image or you know things like that? So they don't seem to get the concept behind it And what I just say to them is that is there to help the actual design breathe It helps you know it helps you lay everything up correctly and it allows people to see everything nicely You know the bottom line is you want that page to convert and what I mean by that if you've got a contact form on there or if you've got like a Any kind of call to action or a product then to be added to the basket if you're overloading that page with you know Needless stuff needless design elements.

You're literally just killing that that potential of a conversion right there So, you know, I'm an advocate for you know a lot of white space and keeping things very very keen and simple Whereas before I used to be very design heavy design, you know, you know, you know Drop shadows everywhere and you know all kinds of asset equal touches to the actual page and things like that But that's kind of gone now So, you know for me is it's all about keeping it clean keeping it simple and you know and in the day it's functional and it Works, you know, why go crazy with the look and feel and that's how I feel about it personally Yeah, I mean the project that I'm working on currently is we're basically re-platforming this this form that the company uses They currently have a Windows desktop application, which is like the default Windows Like what's the word like that? Yeah, the default application windows where it has like a grey background with small text fields and all the default starting on the button The typical window is 95 windows 2000 looking application and there's loads and loads of text fields on the screen And they've got their staff are mainly sort of data entry staff where they quickly tab between all these fields and they're so used to Entering this data quite quickly and what the company wants to do is just make this this whole application available on the web so that People can enter this data on different platforms and you know out in the field when there on iPad for example And one of the biggest challenges I've had with this client is Making their their dense fairly dense small form Into something that's usable on the web and especially usable on a tablet with touch interface as well So as you can imagine it causes for touch everything needs to be a little bit bigger All the fields are they've got like a minimum size they need to be for your fingers and you know there needs to be Space for like error messages and validation messages and stuff like that So there needs to be a fairly large amount of free space available for this extra information That's going to be shown and hidden and I just remember like first the first round of designs that I provided for them It was completely shot down straight away and it was like why is everything so big we want everything to fit on one page Right and it just took a bit of a bit of effort and of explanation that you know with we're talking about a website here We can't really think of a website as a page. It's something that scrolls It's not like a just a static page You know a browser could be completely different size and one one machine to the next and then you know a different shape on a tablet Or a different shape on a mobile so there was a bit of push back there but just like you were saying you know with the white space and you know having elements of a certain size and spacing and so forth It's so important on the web and it's not always quite apparent to the client You know what why is there and as long as you can explain that well You know they did come round in the end and they saw for the reason for it Once you know the actual prototype was built and the wife and just like to be built up So yeah, that's just something to consider that not everything is always going to be you know This fixed size and fixed ratio and you know on this one type of screen exactly You know the web can be viewed in so many different ways that you really need to think about all these different scenarios Yeah, I'm not quite clients now who have websites that were built a long time ago in these websites are using a 960 Witch little grit and it looks tiny You know on a lot of money to put on a size model kind of using now and what was once of either and it's just terrible So as soon as I create the initial design and the concept for it and using full full width design It blows their mind and it's the kind of like the first question they ask is why is all this white space there? You know why is it so small?

Yeah, we're exactly you know what's going on here You know where's the edges where's the box that holds the website? So you know it's about at the same time It's kind of making them understand how that kind of works, you know in a responsive environment as well and You know it's a bit of a Wordy, but you know for me to understand that when it was happening when the when we were moving from you know 960 fixed with websites to responsive to responsive websites even I couldn't get my head around it So for me it was a liquid kind of you know design approach and things like that. It doesn't work for me I just couldn't get my head around it But it took a while and then you know now it's kind of like, you know, you fully understand You know how it works and you know the way you know devices display information I think it's the same thing for the clients once they see the different you know versions of those landing pages on the actual device I think it kind of like makes it easier for them as well Yeah, but yeah, I'm going for at the moment with a client that had a website that was built like late 90s And yeah, it's it's got gifts on it It's got flash files on it which don't even work and it doesn't work on mobile So it's gonna be interesting one to work with yeah, yeah, um, we touched on typography as a I can made a trend right now Um For me, I think typography makes or breaks a website, you know, it's so fundamental to get that right This day and age especially when more web browsers supporting loads of different types of fonts now We've got Google fonts and all kinds of other libraries, which you know have your fonts set up on there now I'm I want to know from you where you go for your typography Inspiration and do you even go anywhere for that? Or do you have a set pairing that you tend to use or how do you work with typography?

I don't have a set pairing I am It depends on the application if it's like a mobile mobile application that I might be designing then I will try and stick to System fonts for for the bulk of the content. I just find that when you do use this system font It just gives the user a user a sense of familiarity because it's seen the same style of text Especially for the body text for headings and titles and things like that Maybe you can go for something more custom but for body text paragraphs I tend to stick to system fonts where I can in terms of like finding fonts and inspiration You know, I do browse Google fonts every now and then I do look for pairings on their specimen pages They have some pretty good pretty good pairings and other than that I get more download most of my fonts from Defontt I think I get most of them from I've bought a few commercial fonts in the past But they're few and far between I think most of the free fonts that I've got you know The ones that are okay for a personal and commercial use they're both pretty good There's a website called fonts in use.com, which is pretty good. It's like a it's a bit like dribble for fonts But it's it finds like designs out in the world and tells you what the font is basically nice There's that on Reddit There's a Reddit subreddit called font sporting where people basically takes screenshots or you know photos of designs And people are just helping out to identify the fonts And then you know a lot of people do supply links to where you can go and download that font if it's free as all or find similar free ones So that's pretty good. I've got one there now then What the font that's pretty good where you can upload your own screenshots and it gives you a rough idea of what the font is But I think fonts and users probably the one that I visit the most often if I was just looking for inspiration But generally I probably do the same thing that most people do is I will type out the word that I'm looking You know type out my heading or my you know logo text or whatever and then I'll go to my fonts And I'll select the first one and I'll hit the down arrow and scroll scroll scroll scroll And you know there's massive collection of like you know hundreds and hundreds of fonts and you can be there for you can be there for an hour really but then Sketch doesn't have this but when I use Photoshop and Illustrator more they do have an option to style your favorite fonts So I had a few always you know some go to fonts that you should always use or you know It's that the brand the client that we were you know working for the other time their brand font I used to just favorite favorite it So they some accessible quickly, but it's good to have that would be nice if they did Yeah, yeah, that's a simple feature And I think it should have that by default.

It's annoying those spending time going for these months But I've started to latch on to appearing though I've kind of like picked up Montserrat as like a main Kyle and heading for Montserrat black so that's like the boldest you can get and I think sauce and sis called Sounds broke for like the body Content sort of the typeface so I've been using that quite a lot in in certain you know So I was working on and the clients into like it as well big bold headings and nice legible clean typeface Which works really well on mobile devices as well. So yeah Cool, right. That's the design side of it just going into More I think coding aspect of it and coding inspiration and things like that So I'll give you an example of the things that I tend to do so when I'm putting a website together and I've you know You can't show functional elements on a stack design right so what I tend to do is I do a design and This is a you know, we've got a home page and on the home page You might have things like a you know, like a carousel or an accordion or tabs things other and you can't show that working in a design But you can probably show you know using some prototyping tool or Get example from a website and send that link to the client and they can have a play with it and kind of understand how an accordion works Or how carousel works, but what I tend to find myself doing is I kind of get bored with the standard bootstrap style carousels And you know the really default kind of things that are out there and you know, I tend to find myself going to This website I've been using for years co-drops And you can go through their blueprints and their playground and find literally thousands and thousands of different You know ways a simple jQuery Howard carousel can be implemented And you know using design and human-computer interaction Principles to make them even better. So I use code drops a lot So what I tend to do is I tend to go on there and just pull an example from there and implement that into the website I'm actually working on so that's something that I use and it works really well.

Okay, it takes a bit time Because you obviously you gotta you know optimize it and get it working correctly because if you take the code as it is I put it in your website on the work straight way and the things that you've got mess around with before it starts working So I can spend a lot of time Doing that with certain things and should then showing the client and then getting this or feedback on it And then when they're okay with that kind of implement it into the actual website built Is there anything that you use out there like I've been I've subscribed to co-drops in my RSS feed for years now and it's one of the few sort of What's the word? It's one of the one of the few sort of UI code examples or websites that I've been subscribed to for a long long time and Yeah, I'll go I'm gonna go on there once a week at least just go and look at this or latest Examples and yeah, they've always got something that's completely out of the box So it could be it could be something as simple as a you know 15 20 different styles of hover states for a button for example And some of them are just like you know completely left field where you wouldn't even think to do something like that Whereas you know the others are quite simple where you know the button might just sort of depress slightly or raise like And then you know they've got such a variety and plus they give you all the code samples as well. So yeah, it's a really good really good site Coder up, so I use up a lot. I tend to go on smashing magazine Again, these are the ones I'll sort of subscribe to their assets feeds Css tricks, I think I probably visit css tricks every couple of weeks definitely Every time I need to look up flex box and CSS grid I'm definitely gonna go to the css tricks articles because it's always on the they've got they've just got it sussed But then otherwise I just get sort of inspiration from from github from code pen Yeah, yeah, if you're the sites are that if I was going to be showing some sort of UI work to a client I'd probably stick with code pen most of the time.

Yeah, it makes it very quick to sort of put in a library if you want You know, I like the way that the editor works. It's got a lot of the same shortcuts as VS code So it's quite easy to sort translate your workflow from your your own editor into code pen And then obviously the the coupon the final output is embeddable as well so you can you know embed in the local Share it and so use code pen quite a lot Yeah, I find myself in code pen as well I'm looking at you know certain things that I'm looking for and usually, you know Thankfully people out there that have used code pen to create an example Yeah code pens like the It's basically the dribble of code isn't it because dribble has always been this site where people really sort of push the boundaries of what they can design and You know like I said earlier on dribble a lot of the designs are They're very sandboxed little UI elements So they might necessarily be a whole site on there But you know you might just have someone who's gone all in on designing this little carousel view for example And then you'll get the same sort of thing on code pen where someone's gone in and just built this one component And they've really thought about everything and you know really pushing the boundaries of what you can do We would just HTML CSS and JavaScript essentially and if you just go to the you know the the homepage of code pen and just look at their Top picks or whatever their sort of latest trends are and you just see the ones that them You know the popular posts the popular pens on there something amazing And you just think how are people creating this stuff? How are people even thinking of creating this stuff? But a lot of it's not even practical.

I mean I can't imagine using half the stuff in code Ben on an actual website But it's good to It's a good place to go just to give yourself a faith in the industry good I mean just remind yourself that you know there's so much that can be done So one or twenty percent of Android a bit then just settle for this simple, you know bootstrap Exactly. Yeah, I'm the same. You know sometimes I can get lazy and I'm like you can't forget it We'll just let bootstrap solve my carousel issue or you know my according issue We'll just let bootstraps carry on with it And then what I might do is a slightly a little bit better I'll use the design inspiration that I've picked up from another site and you know Put that into the actual into my into my design and just give it a little bit of a That sort of finishing sort of polished looking feel to it to take it away from the you know the default bootstrap kind of look and feel Because I've you know a few websites I've worked on other designers I picked up on it and said oh that's a bit Bootstraps isn't it? Someone got to change the you know the styling for the according or the carousel.

So yeah, you know I think you know spending a little bit of time on these sites is a you know is beneficial and I think it helps helps us to push ourselves as well, you know to create better things, you know when we're working Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely looking at the coding side of things This was one thing I always find when I'm trying to find a solution to you know creating a function in JavaScript And I'll google the question and then you know always tend to find always tend to go just a overflow where someone's also similar question and You know someone's actually given well not someone but you've got a group of people who probably But forward three or four different answers and what you'll find is none of them are the same They all do the same thing one person's code might be fifty lines long whereas another person's might only be five Your things like that and then what I tend to do is take The best bits that I can make sense of and then I'll implement that for myself or for a website I'm working on and kind of learn at the same time. We've spoken about this before on a previous episode But what I tend to do with the things like that and looking at code is Trying to find people who explain themselves very well when they write the code So not just putting the code up there and saying that this is it here's an example. Hey, it works Here's the code pain for it bang That's it while I'm trying to find these people who explain themselves and then trying to get an understanding of why they've done it that way Because it might not be the shortest way to do it But it might be the longest way to do it But it still gets you to you know the answer on a solution to get to and Ask you because you spend a lot more time doing this kind of coding.

It's just when you're working in reacting things like that Do you find yourself going to certain like individuals maybe that you're following or certain websites where you're taking these examples and you know Taking like an inspiration from the actual code in the way it's been written and are you taking that into your own coding moving forwards? So when you write writing this code in the future for another project, you're really inspired and you've got that all there now And then you're basically just pushing out there without having to refer back. So I suppose yeah, I suppose You know, I suppose that is always happening unintentionally when I'm on stack overflow for example I will I will take note of you know, which answers have got more responses more applies or which ones have got more up votes You know, it's sometimes accepted answer is usually the first answer But you know if you just take a bit of time to scroll further down the list, you know, you might just find a different take on things Yeah, you know, sometimes like you said the short the short answers I find that they maybe overcomplicate things a little bit by making them too short and You know sometimes it's not it's not it's not a bad thing to add a few extra lines of food If it makes it clearer for yourself, you know, essentially the computer is going to understand and you end up with the same result You know, you might save a few bytes here and there But it needs to be something that you understand as a developer and something that you can you can explain to someone else after you've written it So So I'll go for the understander. I'll go for the solution that I understand the most Yes, say same with me I find myself writing tons of JavaScript to get a simple thing done and then I think to myself, you know You know, I'm sure is a you know an easier way to do to write this code and then I'll find it But they not understand that code.

Yeah, I got on a project last year and I Got a little snippet of stack overflow, which was basically a you know, you know When you got radio buttons and you've got a radio button seven on change event, right? So you can you can detect that by default, but one thing they don't have by default is a deselect event So when you an on change will always return what you change to but it completely disregards what you change from and this project I was working on we needed to keep a keep a track of what the last selected radio button was So I needed a deselect event and capture that so anyway I've got some someone had figured this out and it was on stack overflow So I'll copy the page to that into my project and it worked perfect, right? Exactly. I wanted to work but then a couple of weeks later, you know, I needed to sort of make I need to refactor my code a little bit and I came across this snippet that I I pasted in I was like, all right I know this works, but I don't understand at all why it works It just works and then I just sort of spent you know an hour or so just just renaming the variables and and just adding some line breaks and stuff like that just to make it a bit more readable for myself and You know when you're renaming variables as long as you're renamed all instances of them It does rematter what that variable is called it to work And I just got it from something that was like four lines into like seven lines or something like that It didn't make a message change But it looked it looked like a lot more code because of the names of the variables were a lot longer and stuff like that Right, but for me now and for anyone who comes after me It's perfectly clear what that's for and about it comments basically document it and but what I've done is in the comments I've left a link to the original stack overflow answer So if for any reason it stops working in the future Then you know there's a reference back to where it was and you could potentially ask the original poster for some help again So I think it's important to do that if you are copying a pacing code from anywhere Just just take a few extra minutes to just understand what it's doing and then turn it into your own don't just blindly copy Pacing you end up with coders.

That's just sort of hanging on with by thread Yeah, that's what I find happening myself this website that I'm managing for a client at the moment It's a number plate builder and The amount of jobs we've got to you know, you know learn and create from scratch And then later refer to and then fully understand it because I've wrote this my way It's brilliant and just makes complete, you know, it sends to me But if I was to hand you that file you know You probably have a heart attack because it's not organized in any certain way You know, I'm not using any kind of shortcuts or certain things is there's nothing They which could be you know in one function, but I've got to repeat a function to do, you know something else But you probably find a way to you know concatenize all of that and make it a lot easier and save a lot of you know Space in the file as well. So but just looking at that file I can refer to it, you know in three months time and I'll be able to tell you exactly what each line of code does That's because I've kind of like okay I picked up the solutions from stack overflow and other websites But what I've done is I've kind of yeah played around with it broke it apart put it back together again And we've written it in my way and so it makes full you know complete sense to me Yeah, I'm not sure it's a coding inspiration. Do you ever look at anyone's code and think well go to a website view source of think wow That's amazing I don't have you source because view source is kind of it breaks down to the same thing in the end It's just it's just HTML and you know the way that HTML has got there could be a million different ways It could have all been hand coded it could have all been computer generated on the fly So I don't think that's that's necessarily the way to look at it But I do you know follow a few people on github and you know do like looking at some of the stuff that they push out There's a guy called Matias Bynes, but you know Binance Binance Matias Binance Yeah, he's got some good repositories and he's not you know always releasing like these small little little libraries which are useful There's another guy called Simdosaurus. I think he's most people probably know he is Again always pushing out little useful little libraries and stuff like that What's the name adios money He wrote the book on JavaScript design patterns and then yeah again he Tends to tweet a lot and a lot of his tweets because he works for Chrome something in the Chrome team and A lot of his tweets are about performance gains and things like that So he's one of those people who will find a very streamlined way of doing things Which you know looking at it after this launch it might be quite obvious what's happening But you know takes a bit time to just break things down into you know something that you understand but yeah taking inspiration from them These people like Wes boss.

He's got a bunch of like development courses He's got calls called JavaScript 30 which I've which I've done which is a free course and And that one as well is pretty cool. Yeah, it's cool because he approaches Fairly sort of beginning to intermediate Concepts but in an interesting and enjoyable way rather than your typical you know Hello world of you know console logging and stuff like that which is what a lot of people do So you know he's let you build these all real world applications Another guy David Walsh. I'll subscribe to his blog as well. He posts fairly regularly and he posts a lot of little tricks Like coding tricks and stuff like that, which is pretty good Who else Gen Simmons She's obviously more and more this will CSS side of things.

Yeah, I Subscribe to what I does subscribe to anything but just on Twitter and on YouTube She had a channel on YouTube which was to do this whole series on like the layout CSS layout, which is really good So there's a few people like that who I I sort you know I watch what they're doing and I keep an eye on their sort of styles and what they're pushing out Yeah, I think it's the same because the codes gonna be very similar because it's code isn't it? So I think it's the process behind it which you know makes them what makes them do it that way and you know, you know things That's really important as well I've asked questions people like that on Twitter as well and interesting sometimes I'll just say They just came to me and I'm saying it. Well, okay. That's never comes to me I'm always going to pick it up from other people other places.

Yeah, there's Yeah, there's a lot of people unfollowing and Twitter actually a lot of JavaScript Code is very very good coders on there And I'm speaking up a lot of inspiration from these guys Especially you know how to spend more time on it and you know other sources that I probably not heard heard of And I find that these guys are gonna select group or you know on a slack channel and the sharing code and working on stuff We're saying each other like little tasks and like what designers would only do you know create a logo in 30 seconds or things like that They're saying that we'll toss to each other. So that's pretty cool That's first time I've actually heard from things like that. So I might just get involved with something like that in the future Yeah, I used to be a member of this slack team which is now moved over to discord It's it's just called front end developers and it's a massive community It's got never must of thousands of people in it, which is why they moved over to discord because they hit this easily melting on slack and Well, I'm not very active in there, but if I ever have an issue that I need solving They've they've got like separate channels for for like react fanular for view for CSHML for example And I've always found that you know if you post a question in there with it within a couple of hours You normally got a very good answer if not the solution So yeah, I'd like to know about some more discord or slack slack teams where you know they open to the public and you don't want to be too big But you just want to be big enough to be useful this front-end developers one is quite big So sometimes there's too much Random talk in there which you need to sit through right the other communities I go to our sort of spectrum spectrum chat. So there's there's quite a few in there on member of the reactor one on there there's a there's one called front and Cafe front-end cafe, which is a good one.

I post myself in there sometimes You know I've helped answer other people's questions money to get in white to one of these as well because I'm not in any of these Okay, yeah I mean the spectrum is free to join so you can just you can just go into spectrum dot chat and then you can search for different communities And just join them the front end developers discord. I could probably send you an invite But I'm pretty sure we should free to get on to that as well So I'll find out how to get on to them put something in the show notes about how to join these I think you just go to the website and just you know request an invite So that's pretty good obviously we've got the inspect slack team as well So if anyone's doing that then get in touch get in touch on Twitter and we can know I tell you how to get into there Yeah, that needs to grow. I think that one. Yeah, I don't know whether we should keep it on slack or go over to this World or something else or even maybe on spectrum So maybe if you can get in touch on Twitter, you know I inspect FM and let us know way if you were to build a community around this podcast where should we do it what platform should we use?

and it would be good to just get some people who are interested in the topics that we're talking about and Start a little community of our own and then you know, yeah I think that's really cool I think beginners any kind of level like obviously seasoned veterans as well That'd be so cool to have you know like money people on our own little group We can like talk about this up maybe even mental or some of these you know beginners and people are just getting involved Yeah, with development that'd be really cool. I'd like to be like okay So that's an action point for everyone listening now If you want to be part of an ex inspect podcast community or some sort get in touch on Twitter at inspect FM Let us know what sort platform you prefer to use it on Whether that slack or discord or something else that we're not aware of then. Yeah, let's get something set up and get a community Sounds good. I'm all up for that.

It's all good. Yeah in terms of communities I mean, you know podcasts obviously wear a podcast But I listen to a lot of other podcasts for inspiration as well I think most of my time listening to any form of audio is normally podcast when I'm commuting when I'm just relaxing as well So tech related ones are syntax, which is Wesbos and Scott Tullinski ATP Accidental podcast accidental tech podcast, which is you know, it's not really a design or development related It's more tech than Apple related, but it's good inspiration Shock talk show with Chris square and they've Rupert There's a little out, which is more design focused and then there's one that I've started listening recently called HTML all the things which I think it's fairly new they're up to about 4050 episodes I think and I relate with that one a bit more they're a bit more similar to to our podcast is where There's two two chaps who work together. They're in a business together and they're just talking about their daily lives and you know, the What they experience by doing that running their business and that some of the decisions they make and sometimes they just literally just talk On the podcast as if they're just having a meeting and it's quite interesting. So HTML all the things Takes them all the things around to check that one out.

So that was pretty good to hear Cool. Nice. Oh Okay, so moving on from that I think the third thing I want to talk about is quickly touch on I don't know how much it relates to you, but it's Something that's that's always on my mind and it's you know business or business related or you know, life related Inspiration so things you can take from people out. They've really done it and kind of you know implementing in your way of thinking and you know, whether whether that's you're you know, you know, every day life or if you're running a business or You know at work, you know how to get through the day Without stressing out too much.

So for me, I'll just list of these these guys, you know Who I kind of go to for inspiration and just just really kick up the arse really to get me going again after I offer a really, you know Hard week so people like Gary V I love his podcast. I'll just subscribe to his facebook messenger automation Which is pretty cool. It's annoying But it is pretty cool because you get like an ultimate message from him every day And you know, he kind of helps you to kind of I know it's not him, but he's all been pre-thought out And it's a clever way to to kind of reach out to your audience as well. So you know, here's kind of talks on You know just starting and you know getting up on your feet and just getting things done and doing things You know, it's the most simple thing.

It could be the most you know simplest tasks like you know doing a bit sheets You know, I mean you could take something that he's used for turning up a business into a you know a multi-million pound You know Enterprise but you could take that fundamental concept and use it everywhere. So Gary V is like, you know, he's amazing especially with his social media Uh talks that he does he's got a lot to say and I think a lot of it is very very good And you know, I think anyone can take it from a Gary V's book or you know, which is youtube videos and Grab his podcast and you know, definitely, you know, turn you into a much more positive person I think the other ones are TED talks. I know you've mentioned TED talks and pop Yeah, I'm having general kind of people that I've watched on there I think anyone that I've kind of picked up while like doing is randomly picking a TED talk And I find myself kind of, you know being pulled into it. Um, yeah, they're very engrossing on there because they're they're fairly short and they're you know, they're very random I'm subscribed to the TED talks daily podcast and the TED tech podcast, which is I think I think that one's weekly Um, yeah, so it's constantly just, you know, it's in my podcast, you know, up next playlist So I'll just get one in there every now and then and uh, yeah, they're just all sorts topics and the reason I like TED talks is um I like it's not necessarily the topic but it's the style of presenting that I find inspiring, you know Just just seeing people up on stage and you know, just the way they carry themselves Um is impressive to me in terms of our actual inspiration for business related topics and your life general topics Um, yeah, listen to the Tim Ferriss show, which is quite a good one I mean, it talks to a lot of entrepreneurs and and people who are sort of leaders in the industries And then more recently I subscribed to Seth Godin's podcast, which is called a Kimbo Which is um, it's good.

It's just it's just Seth Godin just talking by himself on mic and he's just it's fairly short about 20 minutes episode And he just uh just has like a deep dive Um, what's it what's the word? I'm looking for when When these thoughts just keep going. What's it called? I don't know.

You lost me now. Oh god It's it's like a um Like his train of thought just goes and he just talking while he's thinking it doesn't seem like he's scripted It just seems like he's just you know, he's got this topic in mind and he just he's just riffing off whatever comes to mind Um, so yeah, so quite like his podcast Um tech related well industry related I suppose um developer T It's probably the most sort of business related podcast Uh, which is by Jonathan control who used to be who was a previous guest on this podcast as well, which was episode 15 And um, I've always liked Jonathan control and developer T He was actually one of the first podcasts I subscribed to if not the first and um, I've been listening ever since and he's been going for quite a few years now like four five years And um again, he sort of pushes out a podcast I think three times a week and uh, they normally between 10 and 20 minutes long Um, you know, just enough to that the idea was that it's something that you listen to on your tea break It's called developer T. Um, and he talks about many soft skills. Um, um, how to sort of carry yourself and how to Work with colleagues and clients and how to think like a like a senior engineer and stuff like that It's very very sort of broad range of topics and sometimes uh, you know, he'll talk about something Which is completely unrelated to web development, but he'll find a little way of tying it in And it's more about attitudes and things like that rather than actual business.

How you write your code? That's cool. So yeah, definitely subscribe to do other petees. Probably one of the better ones out there Mm.

Yeah, I'll jump on that one. That sounds really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I've um, I've been looking at a recently entrepreneur dot com I was following it years ago.

I was recently I've kind of um, I think it's the types of inspirational stories that have been putting out there Which have been really grabbing my attention. Um, so like you've got this guy on there who's um, drinks company which is taking on the likes of Coca-Cola and it's like He's produced a drink which is still regarded as a, you know, a fizzy drink, but it's all it's healthy You know, it's a healthy alternative to drinking a coke or a sprite or a fanta But um, you know, again, he's all start up stories about people who have an idea and they're just kind of like, you know telling the story and where they kind of side And uh, yeah, it's pretty cool, but um, the other two that I listened to Joe Rogan and Jack Mar You probably heard of Joe Rogan. Yeah, well, I've heard of him. I'm never actually you listen to his stuff I know he's got a podcast as well, which is kind of at the top of the charts and just forever Um, but I haven't subscribed to it.

Maybe I should Yeah, now he's pretty good. Um, and Jack Mar, um, business stuff. He's amazing. Um, just that some of stuff he comes out with just really, you know Just you know strikes are called to me and um, I've been referring to him quite a lot recently.

Okay. Yeah, well I'll definitely subscribe to a few of these in and check them out getting spied 100% I think um, yeah, I think that's um wrapped up this episode nicely there Um, anything you want to add? No, just one of the other things that I do, um, for inspiration is that I obviously, you know, Everyone's got a phone in the pocket with a camera and um, just just take photos of things. You see something Some nice design.

You see something with interesting colors Um, just snap a photo and take it with you or you know, record a voice memo when inspiration hits because you just never know when it's gonna happen, right? And um, there's been times where, you know, I've walked past the building which has got a nice paint on the side and you know, You just take a photo of it and you can, you know, get an idea of how colors sort of sit and sit with each other And then you can go and incorporate that into your designs later on down the line. So yeah, make use of the tools in your pocket because it's just brilliant Is a nice tip But one thing I do, I take a little bit further, I take a picture I upload it to what pictures I uploaded to Pinterest to a board and then what happens that board will get shit and pinged by hundreds of other people And it'll kind of snowball into, you know, more and more inspiration going into different kind of avenues and things like that. Yeah, that's that's one way of definitely becoming like a Influencer, which is what we all want to be really lonely.

Yeah, 100% Alright, wicked. Um, I think let's wrap it up there. Um, so yeah, remember you can get in touch with us on twitter at inspect FM And you can find the show notes for this episode and archival previous shows on the website inspect FM And if you want to get in touch with myself, you can find me on twitter at Ajakawa And if you want to get in touch with k on twitter, you are at we are delve which has a number three in there So you better off listening at the show notes because he's just got a rubbish to it and all Yeah, we are delve was taken right you can change your company. Yeah, but yeah, anyway, thanks for listening and remember to hit subscribe If you enjoyed the podcast and consider leaving a rating or review in apple pukas and that'll be nice and uh, that's it.

Bye for me Bye for me. Bye for me. Yeah, that one would want to be in there. I'll probably get into it You