The definitive guide to branding inspiration websites for designers in 2026. Covering The Brand Identity, Behance, Brand New, Awwwards, Dribbble, The Dieline, and 9 more — with a comparison table, designer workflow tips, and 2026 trend breakdown.
Last updated:
September 20, 2026
Finding branding inspiration is easy. Finding references that help you make a design decision takes more care.
A logo gallery can help you explore letterforms. A detailed case study can show how an identity works across packaging, print, and digital. A live website lets you study the motion and interactions that screenshots leave out.
This guide brings together 15 sources for different parts of the branding process, followed by a practical way to turn what you find into a reference library your team can use.
Choose a source around the question you are trying to answer:
You do not need to browse all 15 for every project. Start with a few that match your brief, then explore other disciplines when you need a different perspective.
Best for: Identity projects, studio interviews, and editorial context.
The Brand Identity publishes curated case studies, interviews, and features about brands and design studios. It is a useful starting point when you want to understand an identity beyond its logo.
Look for the relationship between typography, imagery, color, and applications. When a project interests you, follow it through to the studio’s own case study for additional context.
Try this: Save one project and describe the design decision you would like to discuss with your team.
Best for: Exploring branding projects and designers’ portfolios.
Behance hosts creative portfolios across branding, graphic design, illustration, photography, and other disciplines. It gives you room to explore how different designers present their work.
Use it to find projects with enough applications to understand the wider identity. Pay attention to whether an entry describes commissioned work, a concept, or a personal project.
Try this: Compare three projects from the same sector. Identify which design choices are common and which help a brand feel distinct.
Best for: Studying identity changes and rebrand critiques.
Brand New, published by UnderConsideration, covers corporate and brand identity work, including reviews of redesigns.
It is a useful place to consider what a rebrand changes, what it retains, and how the new identity appears across applications. Read the analysis alongside the visuals, then form your own view.
Try this: Before reading a review, write down what you think the redesign improves. Compare your reasoning with the article afterward.
Best for: Website design, motion, and digital brand expression.
Awwwards showcases websites through awards, collections, and categories covering areas such as interaction design, ecommerce, and agency websites.
For branding research, follow through to the live site. Typography, navigation, transitions, and scrolling behavior can all contribute to how an identity feels.
Try this: Save a website for one specific interaction. Describe what happens and why it suits the brand.
Best for: Exploring logo ideas, visual treatments, and interface concepts.
Dribbble features design work across branding, illustration, web design, and product interfaces. It is useful for scanning different visual approaches early in a project.
Treat each presentation as a starting point for investigation. A polished composition does not necessarily show how a design performs across a complete identity or a working product.
Try this: Gather three different approaches to the same problem, such as a hospitality wordmark or an editorial homepage.
Best for: Packaging design and physical brand applications.
Dieline covers packaging through project features, interviews, redesigns, and industry articles. Its categories include food, beverages, beauty, and other consumer products.
Use it when your identity needs to work on physical objects. Study the relationship between type, imagery, information hierarchy, and the shape of the packaging.
Try this: Compare how several products distinguish variants while keeping the overall brand recognizable.
Best for: Exploring ideas across creative disciplines.
Inspiration Grid features work across branding, graphic design, illustration, photography, and other creative fields.
That breadth makes it a useful place to look when references from your client’s own industry start to feel repetitive. An editorial layout or an illustration approach might suggest a direction worth exploring in a brand project.
Try this: Find one reference outside branding and explain how its composition, texture, or color relationships could inform your brief.
Best for: Identity launches, reveal videos, and motion references.
Rebrand collects rebrands and visual identities, including identity launches and reveal videos.
It is worth exploring when you want to study how a brand introduces itself through a sequence. Watch how typography, symbols, imagery, and transitions work together over time.
Try this: Choose a reveal video and identify one motion principle you could discuss with your team, such as pacing, repetition, or how elements enter the frame.
Best for: Connecting references across themes and disciplines.
Are.na lets people collect webpages, images, text, and files into channels and collaborate on those collections.
It offers a different route into inspiration: following connections between material rather than browsing only by a design category. It can suit research that draws on writing, architecture, photography, or cultural references alongside graphic design.
Try this: Build a channel around an idea from your brief, such as hospitality or movement, and collect examples from several disciplines.
Best for: Branding alongside typography, editorial design, and digital work.
Abduzeedo publishes design inspiration across categories including branding, typography, graphic design, illustration, and UI/UX.
Use it to broaden a reference search while keeping the work connected to design practice. Exploring adjacent categories can help you consider how an identity might extend into publications, interfaces, or other applications.
Try this: Pair an identity reference with a typography or editorial reference. Explain what connects them and where their approaches differ.
Best for: Exploring brand identities and websites together.
Mindsparkle Mag features branding, packaging, typography, motion, and website design, alongside interviews and stories.
It is a useful source when a project spans both identity and digital work. Explore the identity examples, then look at websites to consider how a visual direction could behave on screen.
Try this: Find a brand project and a website that share a similar tone. Compare how they achieve it through layout, type, imagery, and motion.
Best for: Focused logo research.
Logggos is a curated logo catalog organized by industry, typography style, color, and visual tags.
Those categories can help narrow a broad search into a specific question about a wordmark, symbol, or typographic treatment.
Try this: Compare marks within one category, then inspect a few from unrelated sectors. Look at spacing, proportions, and the relationship between lettering and symbols.
Best for: Curated branding and graphic design projects.
Visual Journal is a design publication curated by Italian art director and design manager Alessandro Scarpellini. It showcases branding and graphic design selected through his personal research.
Consider it when you want to explore a focused editorial selection and discover studios to investigate further.
Try this: Follow a featured project back to its creator. Look for additional applications that help explain the identity beyond the selected images.
Best for: Comparing logos, wordmarks, symbols, and animated marks.
Logosystem is a curated logo inspiration library that includes static and animated examples.
Use it to explore how a mark is constructed and, where motion is included, how it changes over time. Keep the wider brand context in mind when assessing an individual logo.
Try this: Compare a static mark with an animated example. Consider which qualities come from the shape itself and which come from movement.
Best for: Discovering and collecting visual references.
Savee combines visual discovery with tools for saving, organizing, and sharing inspiration. It also offers shared boards for teams.
It is worth exploring when your research centers on imagery, typography, color, and composition, and you want to develop a visual collection around a direction.
Try this: Build a small board around one clear idea. Remove references that look attractive but do not help explain that direction.
Before saving a reference, ask what it contributes to your project.
A useful collection should help your team discuss decisions such as:
Try to describe the principle behind a reference. “The oversized type creates a clear reading order” gives your team more to work with than “I like the typography.”
Once you have found useful references, save them somewhere your team can return to during a project. A small collection with a clear purpose is easier to discuss than a long list of unrelated examples.
Create a reference board around the project you are already working on.
For a hospitality identity, you might collect examples of expressive typography, photography direction, room-page layouts, and booking interactions. Each reference should help answer a question from the brief.
Add a short explanation of the detail you want your colleagues to notice.
For example:
That context helps another designer understand the reference when they revisit it later.
Start with a few shared tags, such as typography, navigation, motion, photography, and packaging.
Use project boards for active work. If a reference remains useful beyond one brief, consider including it in a broader studio collection that people can return to.
Let the structure grow from what your team needs to find.
A screenshot can show composition. A live website lets you explore scrolling, transitions, hover states, and navigation.
Bookmarkify brings interactive website previews into a visual library. With Teams, designers can contribute to a shared workspace, organize references into boards, and discuss them with comments.
Some websites restrict embedded viewing, and live pages can change. Keep a separate screenshot or recording when you need to preserve a particular design state.
Invite a colleague to add a few examples, then open the board during your next internal design review.
Discuss which references fit the brief, which details are worth exploring, and which examples no longer belong. A useful studio library develops through those decisions.
You can explore Bookmarkify Teams or compare bookmark managers for design teams.
It depends on the work you are researching. Start with The Brand Identity or Behance for identity projects, Brand New for rebrand analysis, Dieline for packaging, and Awwwards for digital experiences. For focused logo exploration, try Logggos or Logosystem.
Explore sources that span several disciplines, such as Inspiration Grid, Abduzeedo, and Are.na. Look for relevant principles in editorial design, architecture, photography, or illustration, then consider how they could apply to your brief.
Access varies. Some offer public browsing alongside paid subscriptions, premium collections, or account-based features. Check the current access terms on each site, especially if your team needs a particular research or collaboration feature.
Start with a shared collection for one active project. Add a short explanation to each reference, agree on a few tags, and invite colleagues to contribute. Review the collection together so it reflects decisions your team is making.
For interactive website references, Bookmarkify Teams provides a shared library with boards, tags, and comments.
Both can be useful. Screenshots preserve a visual state, while live links let you explore the current website and its interactions. If motion matters and you need a lasting record, keep a recording as well.
Describe the underlying decision you want to learn from: hierarchy, pacing, contrast, proportion, or another design principle. Explore how that principle could answer your own brief, and develop an original execution around the brand’s audience and needs.
Choose two or three sources from this list that match your next brief. Save a small selection, explain why each example matters, and bring it into the conversation with your team.
If the references are websites, Bookmarkify Teams gives your studio a shared place to collect and revisit them, including their interactive details. Start with the project you are already working on.
Ivan S
Lead Marketing Designer @Scribe, Founder @bookmarkify
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