Let's discuss inspiration and tools to form a better design process

I've recently landed my first full-time Front-End development role while also recently landing a freelance job with a production company to help redesign the websites that support their company / shows.

I've been building my coding chops over the past 4 months and definitely am starting to get comfortable building out web apps without much of a design process behind it ie I might draw a small wireframe and run right into coding and piecing the site together as I go. It was here I started to run into the issue of just hitting the wall of piecing the design together as I go and not really delivering what I would call an enjoyable UI experience, or feeling like I could have prepared myself better.

I would love to hear this communities stories about how they started molding their creativity in design/ui, the tools you love to use and why, and just all around advice for someone trying to fill their exp bar.

Thanks Dev.to'ers :)