Web designing is one of the most rapidly emerging professional careers. It requires one to be up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements happening in the field. Following professional discussion forums and communities is one of the best ways to stay connected to professionals from the global design communities in world.
Platforms like Dribble, Glug, Behance, and Adobe invest heavily in creating design communities to spread awareness around how significant a design can be in impacting change in our societies. All these platforms run not just online design forums but conduct offline seminars, conferences, and events to collect great designers on one platform.
Living in the new normal where physical events are hardly happening, this blog lists the 12 best and most reliable online design forums for web designers to follow for any skill-based support and assistance. Professionals from all over the world join these forums to share the latest trends, ideas, seek help, and resolve problems. Let’s look into each platform in detail.
1. Designer Hangout
With over 5000 active members, it is one of the most popular communities for UI and UX web designers. Designer Hangout has a strict vetting process as they skim through the applicants and only allow professionally sound members to maintain high-quality discussions and exchanges in the community.
2. Digital Point
Digital Point is the largest webmaster community in the world with a huge forum. You can find ongoing discussions on various topics such as search engine marketing, business and marketing, design, development as well as buying, selling, and trade.
3. Webdesignforums.net
Probably one of the biggest web design forums, webdesignforums.net accommodates a vast community of digital artists and designers with over 55,000 members. No matter what issue you want to resolve regarding your designs, you will get the correct assistance and answers to your query in detail. Another important aspect of this community is they discuss a few other niches like programming and development, digital marketing, and social media marketing. It makes it even a better place for all IT professionals to join in and contribute to the global design and development community.
4. Coffee Cup
CoffeeCup Software is a unique forum that begun with a simple HTML Editor in a coffee café in 1996. This forum aims to help and guide web designers design better interfaces and websites. The best part is that it does not limit itself to design discussions only; you can seek help in other multi-disciplinary categories. In short, if there’s a knowledgeable design discussion happening, it is most likely that other development discussions are happening simultaneously at the same time in a different window. You can easily search and access any discussion of your choice without any restriction.
5. Talk Graphics
Talk Graphics is a famous community for designers, 2D, and 3D artists. It has a formal registration process that requires your details like email address, date of birth, username, etc. As it focuses on design and graphics, you will find all kinds of professional artists, animators, and designers from across the globe.
6. Graphic Design Forum
With over 30K+ active members, Graphic Design Forum is one of the most active graphic design forums in the digital space. The community has a pool of design thinkers, design students, designers, and artists; offers a wide range of discussion categories like web design, design agency, business, design tools, and plugins, etc.
7. Graphic Design Forums (UK)
Operational since 2008, Graphic Design Forums (UK) has gained over 18000 active global members from all over the world. It is a friendly community for designers of any kind and level. Once you land here, you can see a great exchange of knowledge on design trends, ideas, design-related questions, and answers. Although there are no specific parameters to become a community member yet, you will not witness any non-professional environment in the forum.
8. Photoshop Gurus Forum
Evident from its name, it is one of the most popular design forums for professionals who use Adobe Suite and products like Illustrator, Photoshop, and lightroom. It mainly caters to topics and problems around Photoshop, like software-related queries, general techniques to apply tools, and Photoshop extensions. On this forum, you can seek help from professionals and may get a few projects too.
9. Graphic Design StackExchange
This graphic design forum is part of the network of StackExchange, focused on helping designers with the best of industry knowledge and software-specific help around Photoshop and Illustrator. Once you get in there, you will receive technical tips to try out new tools, plugins, and extensions. Be it any design topic or design theory in general, nothing that you won’t get guided. All you need is to register your query and see the responses pouring in.
10. Envato forum
You must have heard and used the Envato platform for design inspirations, templates, and design assets. Here’s a welcoming Envato Forum, a creative pool for design thinkers, illustrators, digital artists, and web designers to share their work and learn from the Envato marketplace network. It is one of the best forums to share your concerns, learn new design trends and grow your skills.
11. Figma Forum
This forum is run and managed by Figma enthusiasts where they connect with other Figma users to help each other with different tips and tricks and design issues. They introduce newer ways to use Figma – a collaborative, modern design application for professional designers and digital artists.
12. Photography Talk
Photography Talk is a photography forum, not specifically suitable for web designers. However, many newbies or mid-level web designers join in to learn more about photo editing, asset management, picture manipulation, access to free galleries, etc. The best part is that the forum is well-organized and sorted into categories where you can easily navigate to your favorite topic of discussion. You can also throw your query – some of the best photographers and editors will respond to it.
Conclusion:
Forums do not just pop out overnight. These design forums circulate the wealth of knowledge to every aspiring individual. Be it a design forum or any other professional forum; these places can surprise you big time. No matter how skilled you are, these forums always have something new to share. That’s what keeps you going in the design profession. Join the groups discussed above and experience a new learning curve.