Posts tagged web designer
Top 10 Web Design Resources Every Designer Should Know About
Feb 14th
Where would web designers be without the invaluable resources provided on the web for us? Design inspiration, stock photos, tutorials, fonts, freebies, brushes, textures … the list goes on. Take advantage of the resources and expertise other web designers offer for free! Here are 10 of my absolute favourites, in no particular order:
Design Meltdown (design inspiration)
Browse thousands of cataloged sites to get inspiration for your own web designs – invaluable for finding inspiration on specific design elements, styles, themes, or colours.
Scrnshots (design inspiration)
Browse screenshots of inspirational web design uploaded by other users or upload your own favourite designs. Very useful for finding inspiration about specific elements since you browse by tags and keywords.
Designer’s Toolbox (design resources)
Provides many miscellaneous design and print resources, including PSDs of HTML form and browser elements for realistic design mock-ups.
Stock Xchng (stock photos)
One of the best free stock photo sites; Stock Exchange provides thousands of super high-quality stock photos for FREE for both personal and commercial use.
Smashing Magazine (interactive design blog)
The most well-known web design blog out there, Smashing Magazine provides TONS of information, resources, tutorials, and tips from industry professionals. Try to soak up as much of their expertise as you possibly can.
DaFont (free fonts)
Browse their huge selection of free fonts to spice up your design. They make it easy to find a specific type of font since you can browse by theme, name, or search for keywords!
Blind Text Generator (dummy text)
Generates highly-customizable dummy text (lorem ipsum) for use in the text areas of your design.
Type Tester (css font comparison)
Preview different web-safe fonts to see what they will look like on the screen and customize the different CSS font options.
Color Scheme Designer (colour palettes)
Highly-customize colour palette generator which allows you to also preview what the colour scheme could look like on a web page.
Design Resources Search Engine (design search engine)
This search engine has endless usefulness – it allows you to do a Google search but only on the selected design-related websites. Great for finding tutorials, resources, and blogs.
What are YOUR favourite web design resources? Comment and let us know! 
If you liked this post, you might also like…
GIMP – The FREE Alternative to Photoshop
Feb 8th
Let’s face it: Photoshop is freakin’ EXPENSIVE. At a whopping $700 US for Photoshop CS4, you had better hope your parents decide to spoil you and buy it for you next Christmas. Unfortunately, the high price point makes it difficult for beginners and aspiring web designers to get into the business – you had better be darn sure web design is what you want to do before spending $700 on Photoshop. So what are the alternatives?
GIMP is the best Photoshop alternative out there and it’s completely free. It offers many of the same advanced features as Photoshop – for FREE. While, so far, nothing can replace Photoshop as an industry standard, GIMP is certainly a passable equivalent for beginners.
CNET Download.com reviewed it and gave it 5/5 stars:
“One of the most powerful general-purpose image editors around, the upgrades make the GNU Image Manipulation Program eminently comparable to Photoshop. Older features include channels, layers and masks, filters and effects, tabbed palettes, editable text tools, perspective clone, improved printing, and color operations such as levels. New improvements include GEGL integration for 32-bit color support, dynamic brushes, and more options for the free select tool. It even has regex-based pattern matching for power users.”
How to Brand Yourself as a Freelance Interactive Designer
Feb 1st
Creating a memorable and successful brand and marketing yourself is a very important aspect of being an interactive designer. Here is an excellent article by WebDesigner Depot entitled The Art of Branding Yourself and Your Freelancing Business – it covers everything from writing the elevator pitch to defining the target audience to logo and website design.
Site’s Ready!
Jan 24th
Capilano University’s Interactive Design program’s student blog is now ready to go. We’ve posted some tools, tutorials, program details and other stuff, so check back often as we’ll be posting new stuff daily!
Loading ...