A collection of design related links I have come across whilst working on various design projects (web & print). I could never find them in my bookmarks so I decided to create this page. Affiliate/Commission links are highlighted.
Categories:
- Colour
- Directories
- eBook Tools
- Fonts
- Graphics/Icons
- Inspiration
- Illustrators
- Mac related
- Photography
- Photo Libraries
- Print Design
- Printers/ing
- Productivity Tools
- Recommended reading
- Recruitment / Jobs
- Sell / Buy work
- Software
- Supplies
- Sustainability/Green
- Tutorials
- Typography
- Web design
- Web development/Tools - Wireframing
- Worth knowing
- Fun!!
- Sites I like
Colour
- Color Combo - select and test color combinations.
- Colorschemer - website-ready colour schemes.
- ColorJack - experiment with colours.
- Kulur - Adobe colour scheme picker.
- Colour Contrast Check tool
- CSS Color Chart.
- Color Schemer - experiment with various colour schemes
- 0-255 - a tool to help designers find variations of any colour.
Directories (online)
- Killersites Directory - web design directory.
- Sortfolio - looking for a web designer?
- Freelanceswitch - directory, blog and jobs.
eBook Tools
- ePubChecker - check formatting of your ePub.
- eBook Resources
Fonts
- Phil's Fonts - find fonts, identify fonts, custom typeface design.
- FontStruct - a free font-building tool by FontShop. Lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes.
- BV Fonts
- FontDiner - Mac and PC fonts.
- Font Shop
- MVB Fonts - good simple site navigation. Not to be confused with BV fonts.
- MYFonts - over 30,000.
- Fontifier - independent directory of typefaces.
- MiniFonts - pixel fonts for web design.
- DaFonts - free and shareware fonts to download. Has a large collection for Mac and Windows.
- Dingbat Depot - source of free dingbat fonts.
- Exlijbris - some excellent free fonts.
- Fontsquirrel - free fonts for commercial use.
- JohnMartz - Fonts for cartoons. Free ones can be downloaded at the bottom of the page.
- Veer - fonts, illustrations and photos.
Graphics / Icons
- ClipartDesign - Free vector clipart, ornaments and icons.
- Vector graphics and Clipart
Inspiration
- LogoPond - logos gallery
- Newsdesigner - a blog about newspaper design.
- Power to the Poster
- Book Cover archive
- Cover Spy - publishing nerds go round New York to find out what people are reading.
- theDieline - package design blog.
Illustrators
- Images of Delight - children's book Illustrations.
Mac stuff
- Secondhand Macs - sell or find Apple Mac products.
Photography/Photographers
- PhotoBox - for those of us who still print photos.
Photo Stock Libraries
- iStockphoto - royalty free stock photography.
- Sxc.hu - free stock photos.
- Dreamstime - low cost stock photos.
- Big Stock Photo - royalty-free stock photos.
- EveryStockPhoto - a search engine for Creative Commons photos.
- Fotolia - cheap royalty-free stock photos.
- DesignPacks - free image collections that can be used in web design projects.
- Freerange - stock photographs and textures.
- Freepik - search engine for free photos and vectors.
Print Design
- Before & After - How to design. Some free pdfs.
- Pantone - colour guides.
- Printernational - tools and information about print design.
- Briar Press - excellent resources for letterpress printers and enthusiasts.
- Desigining for Letterpress - Tips
Printers/ing
- Moo - known for their mini cards but have various cool products now.
- Lovely as a Tree - find green printers and recycled paper (UK).
- Harrington and Squires - letterpress printers and designers. All work done by hand.
- A-Local-Printer- eco-friendly printers for flyers, leaflets, brochures...
- HubCast - global distributed printing.
- Blurb - make your own book.
- Sappi - techinical documents from basic printing process to specific printing problems.
- BPG - prepress guide.
Productivity Tools
- CalendarsQuick - create printable calendars, some free ones to try out.
- Designers Toolbox - designer's print and online reference resources
- Shirt Mockup - Instantly visualise designs on a T'shirt.
- Rates calculator - calculate your hourly rate.
- You Send It - send and receive files
- Box - free online file storage, file sharing, backup data.
- DropBox - another file sharing and online storage website.
- Dropsend - just in case you reached your limit.
- Sliderocket - create presentations online.
- Speaker Deck - have your PDF presentation created (and shared) for online use.
- Docracy - Free legal documents. new!
- FreshBooks - for invoicing and time keeping.
Administration / Accounting
Recommended reading
- A List Apart
- Jason Santa Maria
- Drawar
- Swiss Miss
- 99u (was 99%) - articles, tips and videos on making ideas happen.
- Behance - insights and tips for creatives.
- 52weeks of UX
- Communication Arts
- Smashing Magazine
- How Magazine - designer's source of information.
Recruitment / Jobs
- Authentic Jobs - jobs for designers and developers.
- Krop - design jobs.
- Behance Jobs - jobs for designers & developers.
- Freelanceswitch - for those of us who want to make a living out of freelancing this attracts the right type of client.
Sell / Buy your work
- GumRoad - sell stuff you've made: songs, videos, apps, photos etc.
- Sellfy - sell and promote digital products: templates, graphics, e-books…
Supplies
- Fred Aldous - art and design supplies.
Software
- Quark or InDesign? - the battle between the two desktop publishing giants (just wish it was designed better!).
- InDesign Secrets - resources for InDesign.
- Illustrator Techniques - a publication for Adobe Illustrator users.
Sustainable/Green design
- Lovely as a Tree - find green printers and recycled paper. (UK)
Tutorials
- Good Tutorials - a tutorials for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, CSS, HTML and more.
- Illustrator and Dreamweaver tutorials.
- The Learn List - the site lists and rates tutorials.
Typography
- Thinking with Type
- I love Typography
- Elements of Typographic - a guide to web typography.
- We love Typography - for ideas.
- Typedia - an encyclopedia to classify, categorize and connect typefaces.
- Wordmark - type words into your browser and see them set in the fonts loaded on your computer. new!
Web design
- Web Page Design for Designers - articles, reviews and information.
- Typetester - an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen.
- TypeChart - preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
- FontTester - CSS Font comparison tool.
- What Font - a very useful bookmarklet to find out what fonts are used on websites.
Web Development / Tools
- SiteMaps - tool for mapping pages of a web site.
- StatCounter - free, no ads, invisible statistics counter.
- Converters - topics include: measurements, image resolution, file formats, font handling.
- Fillerati - fedup with lorem ipsum try this for dummy text.
- Lorem Ipsum - if you insist on Latin, here it is.
- Button Maker - a free and easy way to create buttons.
- Astuteo Web Estimator - a very useful web project estimator.
- HTML5Boilerplate - front end template to help you build adaptable websites and apps. new!
- Zibbler - scribble your ideas online using this simple drawing program.
- MockFlow - wireframing and design tools for collaboration services.
- HotSpot - create interactive prototypes and wireframes. new!
Wireframe & Mockup tools
Worth knowing
- NO-SPEC - About speculative or ’spec’ work.
- TradeMarkia - the most complete free search engine for U.S. federally registered trademarks on the Internet.
- myows - get copyright protection online.
Fun stuff!
- Quotes on Design
- Soda - can be addictive!
- Orisinal - free web-based simple games.
- Clientcopia - quotes, comments from clients!
- Flrt - public service announcements!
- Don't click.it - !
- Jackson Pollock - bring out the artist in you, just scroll your mouse and click.
- Wordle - generating “word clouds” from text.
- Bemboszoo - have fun with type.
- Machine - from SymmetryLab, use different components to create a 'machine'.
- The Fun theory - fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better!
- Playspent - It's payday soon, see how good you are at budgeting.
Sites I like! (fun, interesting)
- Tracy Chapman
- Coffee at Home - I like the illustrated graphics.
- Jonathan Yuen - something different, love how the images flow from one to the other.
- Wildcard - move your cursor on the page and see the changes.
- Hema - a bit of fun and clever! (click on blue mug on).
- The Wonder Wall - unusual.