DeviantART, a widely popular online graphic design community, is an unlikely (but surprisingly terrific) place to find inspiration for web design. There are many designers and artists at DeviantART who choose to display their beautiful creations to the rest of the community. It has legions of devoted followers, loads of fresh art and designs, plus an active community. Still, some aspects of DeviantArt have driven users away.
Founded twelve years ago, today deviantART has the widest art-loving audience. However, lately there is an opinion that deviantART is overcrowded with work which can only be called “art” by a long stretch of imagination. So many men, so many censures! Anyway, like it or not, dA is a wonderful art community, but at the same time, it helps to be part of other art networks as well.If you like the idea of DeviantArt but want something different, consider trying out these DeviantArt alternatives today.Here i selected Top 10 Best DeviantArt Alternatives for Web Designers to Showcase their Skills check them out.
ArtRift
Described as a “free platform for creative minds to share and explore content”, ArtRift is a professional website for serious graphic designers. It’s not just limited to design still images, as ArtRift features videos and photography. The community is relatively smaller than DeviantArt, but it has a more polished and elite feel than DA does.
Shadowness
I am quite impressed with Shadowness and just how well laid out this graphic design website is! It’s also in a similar vein a ArtRift, just with a seemingly large community. The artist portfolio section is especially nice and I think DA users will especially enjoy the layout of this portion of Shadowness (similar to DA but much more professional appearing).
Pixiv
While Pixiv is purely in Japanese, it is still a great website for fans of manga, anime and Japanese-themed art in general. You probably need to know Japanese to be able to post on the website (or you’ll need to run everything through a translator tool, like Google Translate), but anyone can easily figure out the website layout to browse it. While most of the art is of the anime-style, there are many pieces that are more traditional or that use different styles of design. For fans of manga and the like, Pixiv has a load of inspiring pieces from new and upcoming artists.
Dribbble
First things first. Dribbble is a “by invitation only” website and stays one of those private networks that every designer is proud to be a part of. Users get 24 free shots each month to showcase their skills and get spotted. Frankly, Dribbble is all about “shots” and “rebounds”. Shots are small (400×300 pixels JPEG, GIF or PNG) sneak peaks of your work or even a piece of it. Rebounding is a good way to reply with a shot or post a series of your sneak peaks tied with a certain idea.
Behance
Unlike deviantART, Behance is built for those who work with art professionally, doing it for a living or as a very serious hobby. Due to the strict rules and high standards, Behance tends to be an upper-level professional network.
The website looks intuitive and well-organized: works are divided into groups, categories, and even countries. You can circle your friends or teammates according to the interests, professional level or the project you are working on together. If you are looking for a standout feature here, take a look at the job board and interaction system. On Behance, artists get a consistent portfolio system to show the workflow and project progress in steps. Although a large number of famous names may scare the beginners, Behance is probably the only place where you can share your experience and knowledge with artists and designers and get professional feedback.
Forrst
Private communities always cause a lot of rumors, but I should admit: Forrst beats them all. It is an invite-only community but if you are a member of GitHub, you have a right to login without asking for an invitation. On the whole, Forrst is all about sharing four categories: questions, snaps, code and links. It may look a bit similar to Dribbble, but it focuses on web developers too.
The editorial team has launched an amazing podcast covering design-centric topics and tutorials, which can be downloaded on iTunes. Being a closed network, Forrst makes its members keep up with the high level of work and invites only those who meet the requirements. Another strict measure is flagging offensive posts, so the community content is always clean and relevant.
Designmoo
Designmoo.com is an open designers’ network aimed to provide its members with objective feedback and the opportunity to get their projects done. With its rich base of free stuff (fonts, brushes, illustrations, icons and other items) and active interaction system, Designmoo is a fast-developing network with one of the largest worldwide communities.
Each work can deserve a “like”, comment and feedback with suggestions. There is also a marketplace for pro members interested in selling their items via Designmoo or a third-party website. The community is vividly using all possible ways to promote free and quality stuff. A very popular one is so-called “Sponsored Freebies” featuring sources of peak traffic on a page branded with a company’s logo.
Designshack
Designshack is a user-friendly all-in-one solution for designers to submit their work, get feedback and make use of regular design-centric news and articles. The website is extremely easy to use; there are three main categories in the gallery: web design, branding, logos and interface design.
Being a part of DesignShack will get you an exclusive WordPress theme “Marketed” for free, while its usual price is $30. Your work can also get featured in a promotional article prepared by the editorial team for $49 only. Thus each member gets an opportunity to get spotted and receive objective critique for his pieces of art.
Patterntap
Let’s move to more focused communities. Patterntap was created four years ago as a “living classroom, where designers learn what is working well on the Web and why”; its members are mostly interested in UI design and patterns. There is a quick Twitter sign up and as a network participant, you can leave your comments below each item. If you are looking for inspiration or improving your design literacy, Patterntap is the right place to go!
Typophile
Typophile is another focused community — this time for typography enthusiasts. If you are fond of typographic art, want to get experience, meet like-minded people and are ready for standing some criticism, you’ll find everything here. The network itself is a huge forum tree, where fonts and typefaces, associated software, tips and tricks are discussed. Holding tons of pieces of creativity, this website has never had paid accounts and is supported by Punchcut.com — a design consulting company from San Francisco.
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