Everyone suffers from them from time to time, but you soon get over it. But if you have a hard core case of mind blank and need some serious “brainfood” to get your creative juices flowing again, we have created a list of 10 great websites that may help.

What makes a great website is the content. These websites cover a large array of topics, have a lot of visuals and allow for user interaction. They also offer tips and tricks that you can use in your next projects, and some even offer royalty free downloads that you can use.

1. My Modern Metropolis

Where art enthusiasts and trendspotters connect over creative ideas. It’s based on three core principles – to share, to inspire and to connect. They conduct in-depth interviews with new and established artists and find the stories going on behind-the-scenes. It’s a great place to start if you’re looking to develop your creative side.

2. Pinterest

A virtual and visual pinboard that lets you organise and share all the inspiring things you find on the web.

3. Smashing magazine

If you’re an aspiring or professional web designer and developer, you’ll thoroughly enjoy the creative content on Smashing Magazine. This website is very thorough – showing off the latest trends in website design as well as giving best practices. They also have some great articles like Take The Initiative and Create Your Own Projects or Breaking Down Doors: Promoting Yourself To Dream Clients.

4. Juxtapoz Magazine

Online version of the leading monthly contemporary and underground art bible, Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine, with featured articles, blogs, video, reader art, gallery guides, forums, and archives.

5. Compfight

A very nice website where you have the ability to  search through the millions of photos on Flickr, websites, blogs and online magazines. Compfight is tailored to efficiently locate images for blogs, comps, inspiration, and research.

6. DaFont

A collection of free fonts that you can use for your projects. They can be downloaded in both OpenType and TrueType font formats, for both the PC and MAC. Most are freeware, or require a donation to use on commercial projects, but be sure to check the artists comments when downloading the font for a project.

7. Grain Edit

If you love being inspired by retro work from the past, this is the website for you. By focusing on what design looked like from 1950s to 1970s, this website shows us how contemporary designers have taken that inspiration one step (or several steps) further. Learn more about artists and designers and what it took for them to develop their creative side.

8. Behance.net

An online platform for creative professionals and aspiring professionals. The website is organized in a way that allows its members to create their own multi-media portfolio, showcasing their work for millions of visitors to see. These visitors include creative companies and journalists as well as fellow artists and designers. By connecting creative people together, the website allows for instant feedback from your peers. For those who want to see the best on Behance, you can browse by most viewed or most appreciated.

9. CG Society

CGTalk is the world’s largest online forum for digital artists! CGTalk is the official forum for The CGSociety (Computer Graphics Society). I come here quite often to see what is the buzz in the world of 3D animation, rendering, 2D animation and the latest industry news and competitions. Check it out and see how good some people are at 3d art.

10. QVectors

A collection of high res vector art that is royalty free. You can search through their every growing database of vector art and hopefully find that certain something that you need to finish your design. For those who do not know, Vector art is a professional form of ‘clip art’. It is mathematical based, not bitmapped (like Clipart), meaning that when it is scaled up for larger projects, without the loss in quality. If this was done with a bitmap file, you will see it becomes grainy and unusable.  To use vector art you will need certain programs like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.

I hope that you all can get as much inspiration out of these sites as I have.