Work has been going pretty well lately, it’s proving to be a bit difficult on my inspiration though. I have the stamina to complete the tasks I have, there’s no question about that. The issue is where I’m unable to come up with ANYTHING for the new clients coming in that hasn’t been done before. I know there are some very creative people out there but it’s one of those situations where once you’ve seen it done before, you know it’s wrong to go out of your way to recreate it and then pass it off as your own. Of course, there is an exception to the rule. If a client asks you to recreate a template that they liked (paid or free, or just on someone else’s website) then you have to do what the client wants – without breaking any major copyright laws at the same time.
I’m working on this new site that’s health related. With the way the client approached me I thought I was going to be working on a hospitals website or something. The money from it is great, don’t get me wrong, but I was going in a completely different direction when he told me to slow down and sent me a long email on exactly what the company was. It’s for a new experimental weight loss supplement, something I’m honestly not sure I would try myself, but they seem pretty darn focused on getting it launched and out there for the world to see so of course I need to come up with something that’s not only informative, but matches their brand label and can appeal to 18-32 year old men and women whom would benefit from using their product.
So what did I do? I went out of my way to look at just about every single site that houses a large database of website templates that I could find. During my search I went through the usual sites, ones that tend to pop into your head as soon as you’re looking for new ideas. Fortunately, I found a new one that’s certainly worth flipping through, that’s for sure. It’s called DreamTemplates.com. They have a database of over 300 templates that are completely free, or you can pay them a one-time-fee of $59.95 and gain access to THOUSANDS of templates.
When looking through the premium templates, I have to say that I was certainly inspired. While the bulk of them look very generic (to me at least) the rest of them are appealing and worth that one-time payment. They’re all high quality templates, all of the sources files are included (if you’re looking at any Flash based ones) and they’re relatively attractive for just about any business or personal site you’re looking to house them on. I’d highly recommend them.
Even though it’s user friendly, it was a little hard to get into how to go about using the controls. I think I’m so used to products like Photoshop where everything is really a static image, that using the little dots to get the right sections to morph can really be interesting. By default, since everything I created looked absolutely horrible. I took one of their premade morphs in order to see how they went about doing it and that’s the one I have listed to the left. I have to say, it’s a really cool program. I just need to figure out the DOTS option on just to get it to work for me.