My Design Secret: Where I Get Ideas for Every Website I Build

2026-10-14 · Web Development · By Toluwani Moses Bakare

A few days ago, someone asked me how I get the ideas for my projects.

Honestly, I had been waiting for him to ask.

He is someone who has been learning, putting in the work, and making a lot of progress. So I decided to give him the answer, and I thought: why not share it here too?

I started by cloning websites

When I started coding, I used to clone different websites.

I would study their hero sections, menus, animations, sliders, interactions and layouts. Then I would take ideas from different websites and combine them to create something of my own.

It was not always perfect, but it taught me a lot.

The habit never left

And that habit never really left me.

Now, whenever I visit a website, I am not just looking at it. I am studying it.

I notice how things move, how the navigation works, how sections are structured, and I am constantly thinking:

"How would I build this?"

Most of those ideas just stay in my head. Then months later, I am working on a completely different project and suddenly think:

"Wait... I could use something like that here."

That is basically my design secret. I collect ideas from everywhere, study how they work, mix different concepts together, and eventually turn them into something new.

I try not to repeat myself

I also try not to repeat my own designs. Every project should feel like its own thing, even if some elements look familiar.

For projects like Darlington Wosa Art, I already had a rough picture of what I wanted in my head from the beginning.

Ademaison Interiors was different. I wanted to get that one really right, so I spent more time researching and exploring ideas.

If you are learning web development

If you are wondering where to get design ideas:

Start looking.

Do not just browse websites. Study them.

Ask yourself why something works, how it was built, and how you could recreate or improve it.

Eventually, you will have a whole library of ideas in your head. And that library becomes your design secret.

You can see where those ideas ended up on my projects page.