I have used every one of these resources as a graphic designer and website developer and have hand picked all of these resources based on their usefulness and overall quality. I hope you find these resources as useful as I do! Enjoy!
Organizations
1. www.gag.org
The Graphic Artists Guild promotes and protects its members and is committed to improving conditions for all graphic designers and the whole industry. They also produce the well known Graphic Artists Guild Handbook which is an essential part of any designers library.
2. www.aiga.org
AIGA, the professional association for design is dedicated to protecting and advancing design and its importance to society. AIGA now represents more than 19,000 designers through national activities and local programs developed by more than 55 chapters and 200 student groups.
Design Tournaments
3. www.cutandpaste.com
Cut&Paste is a world wide live digital design tournament that goes on every year in multiple locations award prizes to the worlds best anonymous designers.
Generally Useful
4. www.lipsum.com
This is a pretty famous site within the design community; you can generate dummy text on this site to put into your designs until the real copy is available.
5. www.alexa.com
Alexa is a traffic ranking site that is widely used to research other sites. It’s not the most accurate tool but it has become common place and your Alexa rank is often a variable when determining advertising costs or site popularity.
6. www.csstype.com
An incredibly useful site that shows you exactly how web fonts will look on your screen.
7. www.brandsoftheworld.com
This is the ultimate branding library with thousands of the worlds most famous and popular logos. Great for researching corporate identity.
8. www.blogsearch.google.com
An easy way to weed out site and just find blog on the topics you are interested in.
9. www.digg.com
Digg.com is a great place for offbeat news and can be in indispensable weapon in your arsenal of traffic getting tools. You can submit well written articles to dig and if it is dugg a lot and becomes popular it can bring in a substantial amount of traffic to your website for free.
10. www.bloglines.com
Bloglines is a great way to organize all the blogs you read into one place instead of having to visit a bunch of different websites and is a good time saver.
11. www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Arguably the best web browser out right now. I use it for most of my web browsing but don’t forget the other browsers when it comes to optimizing your website. Not everyone uses the same browser.
12. www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
This is my favorite email client to use. It’s simple, efficient, and easy to use with solid email alert features. Very handy if you get important emails often.
13. www.adobe.com
Home to the well known design software we all know and love. Good site to check out once in a while for updates and help regarding software such as Photoshop and illustrator.
Networking & Freelance Work
14. www.craigslist.org
Craigslist is one of my favorite forums to use. There are tons of new design jobs and gigs added every day but the competition is stiff so bring your “A” Game.
15. www.getafreelancer.com
If you are looking for an affordable but professional coder this is the place to go. Freelancers bid on projects you post.
16. www.facebook.com
Facebook is growing incredibly fast and is a great way to network with other people and advertising your design services. Many professionals are moving to facebook over other social networking sites.
17. www.myspace.com
Myspace has tons of potential when it comes to snagging freelance gigs or networking. They have a decently active classifieds section that you can use to market your work.
18. www.linkedin.com
Linkedin is a very popular site for professionals and is a valuable networking tool.
19. www.krop.com
Krop.com has a database of jobs for designers, artists, and developers with an instant and easy to use search feature.
20. www.coroflot.com
Corofloat.com is a site where you can promote and host your design portfolio, search for jobs and post to hire some one.
Stock Photography
21. www.istockphoto.com
This stock photography site has incredible photographers and even better prices for illustrations and photos. It will make your life way easier as a designer and has many other benefits such as making money selling your illustrations and photography, networking with other design professionals, promoting your portfolio site, access to active forums and much more!
22. www.corbis.com
Corbis is one of the leading stock photography sites with millions of images online, featuring historical, fine art, business, technology, celebrity, travel, sports and nature photography.
23. www.shutterstock.com
Shutter Shock is a subscription based stock photography site with over two million royalty-free stock photos available.
24. www.bigstockphoto.com
Big Stock Photo lets you upload and download low-cost digital stock photography. They have well over a million photos organized into categories.
25. www.gettyimages.com
Getty Images offers a large searchable collection of rights-managed or royalty-free images and films. Getty Images is a great site if you are looking for current event and public figure related photography.
Color & Charts
26. kuler.adobe.com
Kuler is a useful site to go to find color themes for your projects. Users can submit their own themes to be rated and you can search for many type of color themes.
27. www.colourlovers.com
Colour Lovers is a great site with user submitted color palettes and even cooler is their blog that creates color palettes based on each blog posts at the end of every post.
Nice chart that converts PMS colors to CMYK and RGB color codes for you.
29. www.ideo.com
This extremely useful but simple web safe color chart lets you easily see exactly how different colors will look on your screen.
Inspirational Sites
30. www.cssbeauty.com
CSS Beauty provides its users with a database of well designed CSS designed sites, as well as news and happenings related to the CSS Community.
31. www.thecoolhunter.net
The cool hunter looks for the coolest and craziest stuff from around the world. Be sure to check out the design and art sections on the site.
32. www.logopond.com
The Logo Pond is a great site to go to if you are looking for inspiration while designing a logo. You can even submit your own logo designs to be voted on and reviewed. Good way to get exposure for your studio or freelancing portfolio.
33. www.go2web20.net
The Web 2.0 Design style is the big thing right now and many websites are redesigning their look to get with the times. This awesome site has a massive collection of all the new web 2.0 logos and links the websites.
34. www.cssvault.com
CSS Vault has a collection of spectacular CSS websites and resources including: Articles, Demos, Layouts, Tutorials, and more.
35. www.stumbleupon.com
After selecting topics of interest you can stumble upon quality sites related to those topics. I have found countless amazing sites doing this and not only is it great for finding new sites but it can be a killer way to promote and drive traffic to your own portfolio site or blog.
Portfolio Sites
36. www.altpick.com
Altpic.com is a great portfolio website for artists and designers where many people come searching for the best oif the best. It is a great place to showcase your designs and talent.
37. www.portfolios.com
Portfolios.com is a portfolio search site where viewers can easily browse through thousands of free artist and designer portfolios.
38. www.deviantart.com
DeviantART is a large community of artists and designers who share their work with each other via an online portfolio. Many digital artists and illustrator flock to this site and you can even buy prints of your favorite artwork.
Design Magazines
39. www.printmag.com
PRINT magazine is a very famous bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design.
40. www.howdesign.com
HOW Magazine covers many areas of design such as the business aspect, new technologies, up and coming designers and is a place for creative inspiration.
41. www.idonline.com
I.D. magazine is an International design magazine that covers products, graphics, environments, interactive media and other design related areas.
42. www.computerarts.co.uk
Computer Arts is an informative site with free downloads, tutorials, galleries, competitions, a published magazine and much more.
43. www.maclife.com
MacLife.com provides news and analysis of the popular Apple products and also has daily blogs from Mac Life magazine editors and a nice selection of articles to read.
44. www.pcmag.com
This magazine is definitely handy for any designer. The hardware we use is the back bone of most of our work and PC Magazine has solid reviews of the leading equipment. I always look up products on their website before I buy anything.
45. www.pcworld.com
PC World is a great place for Computer and Internet news and information, Resources, how-tos, downloads, products and more.
Fonts
46. www.dafont.com
Dafont is an easy to use free font site with a large collection of fonts to download it. It has been around a while and is updated often with new fonts.
47. www.urbanfonts.com
Urban Fonts is new to the font world but has quickly established itself as a leader in the free font community. It has an excellent design and is right up there with dafont.com in my book.
48. www.fontshop.com
Font Shop offers great font collections on CD, free fonts, downloadable fonts, typography tips and more.
49. www.linotype.com
Linotype has a massive collection of the most popular and well known fonts available for download. They also have a font lounge with many interesting font related resources.
Tutorials
50. www.pixel2life.com
Pixel2life is one of the largest tutorial search engines on the internet providing great tutorials to graphic designers and programmers.
51. www.good-tutorials.com
Good Tutorials is a massive tutorial website with tens of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and more.
52. www.w3schools.com
If you need to brush up on your coding skills then this is the place to go. The information is accurate and up to date and its def worth taking all the tutorials.
53. www.tutorialoutpost.com
Tutorial Outpost has a vast collection of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, 3D Studio Max, and more!
Photoshop Brushes
54. www.brusheezy.com
Brusheezy is a very useful site with lots of great sets of free brushes varying in style.
55. www.psbrushes.net
PS Brushes is home to over 500 Photoshop brushes that are all free to download and categorized for easy searching.
56. www.getbrushes.com
Get Brushes has sets of Photoshop brushes made up of various swirls, ornamental designs, and flourishes. flowers, dots, circles, and various other ornamentations.
Printers
57. www.4over4.com
4over4 is a good balance between quality and affordability and can handle most of the print jobs you would require.
58. www.modernpostcard.com
Modern postcard is known for its quality printing but can be a bit pricey compared to other sites. If you are looking for top notch printing though look no further.
59. www.vistaprint.com
Vista Print provides custom full color printing services. You can print business cards, Christmas cards, stationery, postcards, magnets, brochures, address labels, and even more.
60. www.clubflyers.com
Club Flyers is an easy to use online printing service with many options available and fast shipping times.
61. www.alocalprinter.com
If you are looking for a way to help the environment as a graphic designer then check out the new age of eco friendly printing.
Blog Hosts
62. www.wordpress.com
Wordpress is my blog host of choice. It’s free and easy to set up on a server and there are tons of great themes and widgets available to use. I use Wordpress for all my blogs.
63. www.blogger.com
Blogger is another very popular blog host. It has many of the same features Wordpress offers.
64. www.twitter.com
Twitter is a surprisingly fun, easy to use and useful site when it comes to letting people know what you are up too.
65. www.squidoo.com
Squidoo is an easy way to put up a quick and free website page about any topic you want. It is very popular in the affiliate marketing industry.
66. www.tumblr.com
Tumblr is another super easy blogging tool that is very similar to Squidoo and twitter and just as good as both of them.
Blogs
67. www.designobserver.com
Design Observer is a well respected site in the design community that features writings related to all aspects of design and culture.
68. www.lifehack.org
This great site is dedicated to hacking your life by providing you with tips and tricks to get things done quickly by automating, organizing and increasing your productivity.
69. www.ilovetypography.com
I Love Typography is a great web site devoted to typography, type, fonts and typefaces of all kinds. If you love typography you will enjoy this site.
Web Hosting
70. www.hostgator.com
Host Gator is a well known, reliable and affordable web hosting company. They have a wide range of hosting services to take care of all your websites bandwidth needs.
71. www.godaddy.com
Go Daddy is one of the biggest and most affordable web hosting and domain registration services. They have excellent customer service and quality servers. It is also very easy to mange you domain names and this is important if you have a lot of them.
Web Design Forums
This is one of the biggest and most popular programming forums around; there are many thread topics raging from coding and servers to search engine optimization and graphic design. It’s a great place to ask questions, find help or promote your services.
73. www.webmasterworld.com
This is a very active and informative forum on the world of web design. It is a great place to learn and have questions answered.
Graphic Design Forums
74. www.graphicdesignforum.com
This is a discussion forum dedicated to all topics related to graphic design.
75. www.graphic-design-forum.com
This is another active design forum that allows you to chat about graphic design and post designs for a review.
76. www.steeldolphin-forums.com
This is a fine art and graphic design forum where many users showcase their work and discuss fine art and graphic design with fellow community members.
Keyword Research
77. www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com
This is an extremely important free tool for keyword research. If you don’t use this tool before you launch a site or blog then your missing out. They also have a more extensive paid version.
78. www.wordze.com
This is another powerful keyword research tool.
79. www.google.com/trends
Google Trends is another good way to research keywords. Some keywords tend to be seasonal so you can check to see if certain keywords tend to fluctuate traffic wise at certain times of the year.
Search Engine Optimization
80. www.seomoz.org
SEOmoz serves as a central hub for search engine marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services related to search engine optimization and marketing.
81. www.thirtydaychallenge.com
This is probably one of the most informative sites I have ever come across in terms of search engine optimization. It literally changed my life.
82. www.seroundtable.com
SEO Roundtable reports on interesting threads taking place at the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) forums. They also write many articles on the topic of search engine optimization and marketing.
Advertising
83. www.google.com/adsense
Google Adsense is a powerhouse in the advertising industry. If you are looking for an easy way to monetize our website or blog then you will definitely want to check this site out.
84. www.adbrite.com
Adbrite is a popular and easy to use text link advertising website where you can buy text link spots or make money by selling advertisement space on your site.
85. www.adengage.com
A place to buy and sell text link ads on popular websites related to your website or blog.
86. www.text-link-ads.com
This is another very popular and easy to use text link advertising site where people can easily purchase advertising space on your blog or website.
Computers & Electronics
87. www.apple.com
Apple computers are a standard in the design industry and they are a great choice if you are looking for an alternative to personal computers.
88. www.newegg.com
I love checking new egg for products because of their fair prices and customer reviews.
89. www.tigerdirect.com
Another great site if you are shopping for anything electronic. They have affordable prices and a wide selection of products to choose from.
90. www.amazon.com
Amazon is fast and reliable and is my favorite online store to buy books from. Delivery is always top notch.
Art Supplies
91. www.dickblick.com
Dick Blick Art Materials has been providing artists with the best supplies since 1911. They have a huge selection of merchandise and good prices.
92. www.pearlpaint.com
Pearl Paint is one of the world’s largest discount art suppliers and has a vast selection of art supplies at very affordable prices.
93. www.aifriedman.com
A.I. Friedman is another great business that has been serving the artist community for over 70 years. Their products range from basic art supplies to studio equipment and furniture.
Graphic and Web Design Books
94. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
By Adrian Shaughnessy
95. Thinking with Type
By Ellen Lupton
96. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of Typography
By David Jury
97. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook
By Graphic Artists Guild
98. HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition
By Elizabeth Castro
99. Bulletproof Web Design
By Dan Cederholm
- youthedesigner
