Minus is My New Plus

I've been looking around for a while for a decent free online file sharing service. I recently got introduced to Minus.com and I love it! Simple and clean interface, tons of space (up to 10 GB free), easy to specify public or private files.

Free High Quality Textures from Lost & Taken

Look at these gorgeous high quality textures from Lost and Taken. There's a huge collection of free textures - I'm stocking up!

Fonts in Use

Fonts in Use is a site that has in depth features on fonts in use in identities, web design, advertising and books. It's interesting for me to see real word design examples and actually learn what font is being used, not have to guess. I like the fonts in The Daily, which Fonts in Use reveals are Founders Grotesk and FF Unit Slab.

FontShop's Type Navigator

From the official description: Meet TypeNavigator, the world's first interactive visual font search system. "Visual" means you don't need to know anything about what you're looking for - all you need is that image in your head."

Update: It looks like this feature no longer exists on FontShop's site. Here is a similar service from Identifont.

Free Comic Sans Font Alternatives from Ban Comic Sans.com

Comic Sans - the font designers love to hate. Ban Comic Sans.com pokes fun at the inappropriate uses of Comic Sans (for example doctor's office letters or informational signs). Check out their free font list with Comic Sans alternatives.

Free Photoshop Brushes from Brush Lovers

Brush Lovers has a huge library of Photoshop brushes, many of which are free! Here are a few free brushes that caught my eye: Nature Spatter, Scrubbed Prime, Flurry of Snowflakes, Magical Lights.

The Daily Dropcap

Visit The Daily Dropcap for original and interesting dropcaps. These are some of my favorites from the last few weeks.

That Isn't Art

In need of a good laugh? That Isn't Art sarcastically pokes fun at typography and photography.

CS5!

CS5 looks like it's going to be one of those "definitely worth it" upgrades. InDesign Secrets takes a look at what's new in InDesign CS5. And Photoshop CS5's content aware brush and content aware fill looks like it's going to take the cake as the best loved new Photoshop feature. Now I just have to wait for it to arrive at our office....

How to Design a Cover in 1:55 seconds

I love this video "How to Design a Cover in 1:55 seconds" I saw posted on design:related. The video:

The Design Inspiration

The Design Inspiration has an good variety of logos, illustrations, fonts, websites, photos and patterns for design inspiration. Some of my picks from today:

Umbrella Sky


Silk Soymilk ad


Risen pattern

daily design discoveries

I just discovered daily design discoveries, a design inspiration blog. Some of my favorites from the last 2 weeks:

Switzerland Postage Stamp

Letterpress Book

Record Album Art

Book Cover Inspiration from WellMedicated.com

I discovered WellMedicated.com through their recent blog entry: 45 Beautifully Designed Book Covers. Here are my favorites from their selection.

Packagings of the World Blog

I recently found the Packagings of the World Blog. The designs featured are diverse and best of all: lots of photos, very little text.

Design Humor

Because sometimes you just need to laugh. Check out this design humor repository at allgraphicdesign.com. Here are my favorite "You Know You're a Designer When..." sayings:

1. You've almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.
   
2. You get mad when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
   
3. You've learned your lesson and stopped using the word "final" in any file name when saving.
   
4. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.
   
5. You've had a great design concept ruined because the client changed it beyond all recognition.
   
6. You've nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)
   
7. You can't go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
   
8. Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash.
   
9. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.
   
10. You know the difference between fuchsia, magenta, and maroon.
    

Google Fight

Google Fight is a hilarious and effective way to compare Google results for different search terms. As shown in the sample search above, I sometimes use it as a spell checker for uncommon words (usually the item with the most results is the correct spelling but not always).

Animator vs. Animation

Here's a cute and creative animation that has a lot of fun with Flash. Click on the image above to be linked to the actual animation by Alan Becker. Thanks to Linda for bringing this to my attention!

Dear Adobe.com

Adobe makes the products designers love to love and love to hate. Dear Adobe.com is an independent outlet for gripes (and a few raves). Some of them really hit the spot...