OK, I have no idea why I’m doing this. Part of what makes a good designer is their resources, and to give them all away is probably career suicide, but that’s how much I’m desperate for your love. So, please take a look through this list and take what you want, you should find them really helpful for a range of uses including image management, customer response, inspiration and word play, then, when you’re done here pop round my house and you can take the shirt off my back, and my cat.
1. Dover Press
I’ve been a member of the free samples mail out that Dover Press release for nearly 5 years now, and I’ve built up a massive arsenal of royalty free images, the range of imagery they supply is amazing, from Abraham Lincoln in his pants through to Chinese Dragons and 1950′s Fridge Freezer ads, all hi res, and all royalty free. Get it every Friday and download everything, you never know when that ‘President in their pants’ brief might drop.
Cost = FREE Weekly Samples
2. Kuler
Making a colour palette stuck in a white office can sometimes be difficult, often you’ll be drawn to the same old bunch of colours, and end up thinking ‘there’s only 4 colours in the world, how can I make a good brand out of that?’, well take a look at Kuler, thousands of preset palettes you can search for based on names, base-colour or feelings .
Cost =FREE Registration Required
Do you work with someone that always comes up with a snappy headline for a campaign or advert? Yeah, they’re probably using Phrasefinder. There are free versions of this kind of tool online, but this is the best I’ve found, and can literally save you hours when trying to come up with that perfect line. Bang in a key word and get a list of every phrase containing that word, then copy and paste them into your ad and tell your client you’ve been up all night. ‘Get your Mojo Working,’ see easy!
Cost = SUBSCRIPTION £28 P/A
Sending your customers a short survey after a job can be really helpful. Find out if you’re over priced or over sensitive and gather customer quotes that you can use on your site. Survey Monkey is a great tool for doing this, and the great thing is you can export the HTML and plonk it right into your site keeping it in a branded template.
Cost = FREE Basic Use
5. We Transfer
There’s loads of transfer sites out there, and they’re getting bigger and freer all the time, at some point you will be able to send someone the whole internet and get a £10 book token for your troubles. WeTransfer is my favourite though, because it’s so beautiful, as a standard user you can take advantage of everyone else’s imagery and photography, but it’s also possible to set up your own branded channel, which looks really slick to for customers when sending them big files.
Cost = SUBSCRIPTION $120 P/A
Sometimes there’s a word right on the edge of your mind and however hard you crack your nut on the corner of your desk, you just can’t pull it back in, this can lead to intense headaches, and be utterly distracting. VisualThesaurus is a really smart tool that visualises the whole process of thinking and can be really helpful when honing and compacting copy lines, spurring new ideas and trimming clunky copy into snappy sentences; unlike this one.
Cost = SUBSCRIPTION $19 P/A
Sometimes you just need to look at some amazing work to get the juices flowing, INT, is a great resource for just that. ‘It’s Nice That has one main mission in life – to champion great creativity’ and it does just that, fashion, packaging, print, branding, anything they deem exceptional gets a mention, and they also publish a quarterly magazine, which is so nice you probably won’t even want to touch it.
Cost = FREE
8. PPH
PPH, yep, PeoplePerHour.com, ever heard of it? For the record, I’m not contractually obliged to put this in here, and the PPH man definitely did not ring me up and threaten to remove my ‘Stars’ if I didn’t put them in the list. You know that couldn’t have happened because he hasn’t even got a mouth. However, I would have mentioned them anyway, use PPH to break free of the chains of your 9-5 job, and set up on your own, it can literally change your life. (Happy now?)
Cost = FREE Basic Membership
OK, stop looking for that Copyright sign right now, it’s been like 20 minutes, you could literally have hand drawn it by now! Copy Paste Character is a really handy toolbox site for quickly copying and pasting that annoyingly shy little character that likes to hide away on the keyboard and drive you mental trying every combination of every key until you’re just mashing the keys and hoping for a miracle.
Cost = FREE
Everyone loves a QR code at the minute, they’re the big ugly, retro future. For a relatively new technology they are probably the most hideous looking thing I’ve ever seen, and they can destroy a piece of design with a wink of their pixelated eye, but they have their place, and clients love them, plus if you’re clever you can build them into a design gracefully.
Took me two minutes to whip this up!
Cost = FREE
Right, I’ve shown you mine, now let’s see yours (oh god put that away, absolutely not what I meant), what online resources do you use to support your work?
Guest Blogger Ben Brown is Creative Director and founder of Citizen Design. He’s worked with Apple, The BBC and Universal Records. You can follow him on Twitter @citizenBB. If you wish to guest blog for PPH, please contact our Community Manager, Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com.
- Before you post a job
- Where to start when you need something designed!
- Time to go Freelance
- Posting a job made easy!
- New Feature Alert!
- 10 Online resources you should know about!
- No more Base + Results Fee for jobs
- Privacy on PPH
- Freelancing – Are you experienced?
- Get starstruck!
- Dollars, stars and chat
- Bootstrapping your Business
- Tax Return Must-Know Steps for US Users
- Freesources Part 2
“We transfer” looks good, though the commonly requested mode of interchange among my clients seems to be dropBox.
Good blog!
Some great ideas here – thanks
Excellent – thanks for this list. Copy Paste Character alone will brighten my day.
QR Codes my be the future, luckily there’s something coming after that’s much more elegant, both in use and visually.
Once touchless payment is fully integrated with the mobile phone market, is there any reason why adverts shouldn’t make use of the same technology? No need to fumble around trying to launch Red Laser, and no need for that ‘pixelated eye’ glaring at you.
“Copypastecharacter?”
*bookmarked!*
Thanks for that it’ll be very useful.
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©
See?
If you’re on a pc, Windows has ‘Character Map’ already built into it
Some great resources there Ben. Thanks for sharing. Very impressive portfolio by the way.