Designer News
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over 8 years ago from Chris Coyier, Web Designer at CodePen
Content inspiration can come from anywhere. It could be a post here on Designer News. It could be through working on a site and solving a problem in a new way. It could be sitting at a conference and hearing something that triggers a spark.
The trick is to try and write everything down as quickly as it comes to you. Write down what made that little idea seem interesting. A little bit more than just a title idea. Maybe a few sentences and some relevant links. That way when you revisit the idea (sleeping on it is a good first step to seeing if it will be a good blog post or not) hopefully you have enough to re-ignite that spark. If not, it's probably not that interesting.
At the same time, don't discount an idea based on the scope. Here's an example of a blog post where there is absolutely nothing new about it and it's a tiny tiny idea that probably doesn't matter to most folks. But I just think it's interesting, and if I do, some other people probably do.
And don't discount an idea based on difficulty or obviousness either. I hear a lot of folks say they don't blog because if they know something, chances are everyone else already does. Definitely not. The things everybody knows, even in this niche industry, are super varied. Definitely don't assume anyone knows anything. Because they either don't (thus will learn) or do (and appreciated being validated).
Designer News
Where the design community meets.
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Have feedback?
Hi Chris - I'm a big fan of your work (CSS-Tricks, ShopTalk, Codepen).
I check out CSS-Tricks often and have even sifted through all of the older posts. I draw inspiration from the flexibility of the site and its propensity towards talking about small, but important considerations - the "scroll-then-fix" comes to mind along with the flexbox navbar post.
My question is, in building CSS-Tricks, what sites, if any, did you draw on for inspiration content-wise. What sites inspire you from a design standpoint?