We know how it is – especially when you freelance all by your lonesome, or work in a company with very few other designers.  You can’t always bounce your creative designs and ideas off of another person that easily.

If you’re a graphic designer, web or app developer, you probably have already heard about this sweet website called dribbble (with 3 B’s, yo).  Dribbble is amazing, but being restricted to spectating kind of stinks.  It’s nearly impossible to actually get an invite so that you can post your own work. I’ve been trying to find an invite to the big dribbb casually for a few years now, but they keep the gates tight on that place (and for good reason – they want to keep out the riff raff, like those pesky folks that like to post iphone photos of their cat).  Even without an invite, dribbble allows you to follow people, click like on their “shots”, and also to compile “buckets” (lightboxes or galleries) of your favorite works.  Here are some of mine, to get an idea.  Nonetheless, it’s an amazing place to view the work of other creative professionals, and to get inspiration from.  But, what if you want to actually participate more, by posting some of your work right now?

Here are 5 of our favorite websites similar to dribbble that you can post your design work to without an invite.

favwork
The first cool site, very similar to dribbble called favwork. I definitely have to post some more of my own personal graphic design portfolio, once I can get around to it. The only main difference to is that there are no gallery or lightbox creating options, and you can’t follow certain artists. You can like pieces, comment on them, and even rework them just like on dribbble.  The traffic is decent, as I’ve been following it regularly these last several days.  It’s not as hopping as dribbble, but I think it will get there once people keep spreading the word.  You would think that this would be the “dribbble for all of the misfits” but I think you will be really impressed with the selection of work on the website.  The site is called favwork for a reason – you’re only supposed to post your favorite and best pieces, for discussing.  Favwork is my favorite dribbble alternative

behance network
Ease of upload on Behance net isn’t as smooth as the others, but the social design community is crazy big, and covers a slew of creative fields.  If you’re a photographer, videographer, illustrator, painter, this website covers it all.  You can submit your work as much as you’d like, without an invite.  This is also another one of my favorite places to browse when I’m bored for inspiration, or just for fun.

deviantart
It’s another website similar to behance, but with a lot more anime and teeny boppers mixed in.  I call it the myspace of creative social networks.  Behance would probably be more like the linkedin of design social-networks.  Deviant is still a fun one, and really well trafficked.  If you haven’t at least browsed the site in a while, we’d highly recommend it.  They have everything from crazy retouching examples, to cool photography, awesome vector illustrations, pencil sketches, paintings, and even more traditional artwork.

forrst
I’ve applied but have to wait to see if I get in to forrst. You can do the same.  While I was waiting, I had a few friend send me an invite.  I am loving Forrst!  This is probably the best dribbble alternative I’ve found, to date.  The community is hopping, and you’ll get lots of honest feedback and critiques.  The site is very easy to use, and allows you to enable email notifications, if you care about that sort of thing. 

psdbucket
This place is similar to favwork, with very quick and easy signup and uploading.  The main difference is (this coming straight from the owners on twitter) “Psdbucket is more to promote your best work/sell good items and favwork is more to get feedback”.  So there you have it.

Honorable mention:

Coroflot
This website has been around for a while, and is more of a personal portfolio tool.  It also allows users to follow one another, leave comments, and like each others’ work.

Yes, there are many other places similar to these we’re sure, but these were the major ones that stood out.  Graphic design related forums can also be a good place for feeback, but the problem with most internet forums is they’re full of trolls (at least most of the recent ones we’ve visited).  We hope you enjoy these free online services for sharing your work and hopefully getting the type of quality feedback and criticism you yearn for. Have any thoughts about these places, or want to link up with us? Chime in below with a link to your profiles on each.

Tags: behance network, coroflot, creative, design, deviantart, dribbble, dribbble alternatives, favwork, forrst, Graphic Design, portfolio

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 11:43 AM and is filed under Graphic Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.