As a kid I had a lot of fun with activity and game books with puzzles and optical illusions. I'm sure everyone has seen this classic:
Is it a vase or two faces?
To me these two pieces by ilovedoodle on Etsy have that same playful relationship with the negative and positive space. Charming illustrations and clever!
The Choir of Antarctica
The Pianist
Optical Illusion Artwork
MorgueFile — Free Stock Photos
The main free stock site I've used in the past is Stock.xchng but I've discovered another great free stock site: MorgueFile.
MorgueFile has a large collection of free stock photos, all of which are free for commercial use (see full license details here). The search feature can be a little clunky at first but it's because the site allows you greater search flexibility (search by color, file size, category, etc.). You can ignore the side filters and just search by one or more keywords using the search box on the top right.
I am having lots of fun looking for gems on this new site. A few favorites so far: multi-color, ferns, cherries, red bokeh
Indesign and ePub Resource List
I attended an excellent 1 day seminar on InDesign to ePub recently. Erica Gamet, the seminar presenter, has a great list of ePub resources on her website. It includes lists of:
- Desktop ePub readers
- Publishers and aggregators
- Reference books and websites
- Software for testing and working with ePub files
- InDesign scripts and plug-ins
- Useful code snippets
Great Food Covers by Coralie Bickford-Smith
Coralie Bickford-Smith brings beautiful color, whimsy and patterns to the Great Food series for Penguin books. My favorite things about this series are the colorful spines and the Love in a Dish cover.
Level Ground Trading Packaging
Level Ground Trading's coffee packaging is beautifully designed. I especially like the bold colors, texture, and black and white people photos. Designed by Subplot.
Detailed Ink Art by Valentina Ramos
I love the detail and color in Valentina Ramos's art. The peacock is definitely my favorite but all of these pieces have so much detail and style. See the full collection in her Etsy shop.
Mr Pavo Real
Moooo - The Cow
The Giraffe
Ganesha: Lord of Success
Font Squirrel - 100% Free Fonts for Commercial Use
If you're tired of searching through the thousands of fonts on sites like dafont.com (current free font count over 12,000) Font Squirrel is a great resource. They hand-pick free high quality commercial-use fonts. Their total font list is a manageable 659. It's such a relief not to plow through junk to find a few gems — the gems are already separated out!
Brent Couchman
This typographical graphic from Friends of Type's feature on Brent Couchman caught my eye. I'm not usually a fan of multi-colored lettering (or brown - I'm really not a fan of the color brown) but the swirling type, texture and colors create a pleasing vintage feel.
Web Inspiration: Variety
Here are a few beautiful, interesting or well-organized website designs that have inspired me lately:
Ennea Sportswear does a great job creating a natural look with interesting textures and elements. I love their logo tab.
Silicon Prairie News is beautifully organized. The floating boxes, subtle color scheme and good use of white space add up to a comfortable and elegant reading experience.
Emily Steffen Photography is stylish in its restraint. My favorite things about this design are the small touches of yellow and shaggy gray page border.
I love Hibiscus Creative's bold use of color and typography. The gray and blue vintage plant art and background add balance and texture.
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