Every so often we all need a little push, help, whatever to keep the projects flowing. Abduzeedo Is a site I frequent for inspiration, concepts and entertainment. It’s blend of interviews of up and coming designers, Daily inspiration features(over 300!), and the occasional tutorial is something I keep coming back to. Abduzeedo has recently (relatively) started doing a best free font article every couple of days, which is hit and miss, but today they showed one called Comfortaa which I can easily see myself using. Super lite san-serif anyone? I love websites that search all the crap on the internet and filter the gold from the junk. If you’ve ever searched on Dafont or fontstruct looking for something to fit a project you know how frustrating it usually is.
When the going gets tough and you need an effect but you’ve got no clue how to do it I find smashing magazine is a resource I use constantly. Bittbox has all the raw materials you need like textures and vector pack, most of which are free. Completing projects is as easy as having a well stocked bookmark list. Even if you don’t have the skills, it’s more often than not on the internet somewhere. It’s not like finding these things is hard either. In the span of writing this post I’ve found 50 tutorials in Maya Which I plan on making use of and a photo manipulation process that I’m playing around with right now.
Any sites that start with “50 Beautiful” – or any sites that link to them, automatically get closed. They are fad designers, and the mark of a true designer, is someone that indulges in market fads, but more so, sustainability.
Abduzeedo is a good marketer – not a great designer, he just has a style. Just find your own style, and you won’t need that kind of inspiration, you make your own.
The others are good, and you might like http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ for free typefaces you can use on commercial projects.
YOURS TRULY,
Michael
Yeah, from a purely non designer pleb POV, websites like that are pretty awesome to just browse through. http://tutsplus.com/ is pretty good sometimes too. The majority of the stuff is fairly like beginner level sometimes! : O But then I feel all super accomplished for adding a realistic gradient to a vector apple!