At work, we have a small team working on a WPF application to supplement our web-based UI. Of course, us being software developers, we can be really lame when it comes to design and I want our application to look decent until we bring a real designer on board. I have told people that I'm good enough at design to know when something looks bad. So I naturally scour the Internet's series of tubes, searching for other people's screen-shots, then visually reverse engineer parts to achieve my "own" effect.
So where does the "real deal" designer get their inspiration? If you tell me it all comes from marinating in your own brain juices...well...do you have any screen-shots I can take a look at? ;)
-Jer