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Design Resource Center

There are thousands, even hundreds of thousands of design resources available on the web, but where do you find the most useful resources? Right here at the Design Resource Center of course! Ok, well that was a little corny, but the Design Resource Center is not (sorry again).

Throughout my years, I have been bookmarking hundreds of resources for design including tutorials, inspiration, fonts, brushes, icons, psd files, vector files, articles, coding, and more. I have narrowed down that list to some of the most complete and valuable sites so you can get back to what you love to do, designing. Most importantly they are all FREE. As a designer, these are the sites you should know and can't live without. Enjoy.

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smashing photoshopillustratordreamweaverfireworksindesignflash check check check check check check
tut_network photoshopillustratordreameaverindesignflash check   check check check check
tutorial9 photoshopillustratordreamworks check check check check check check
gomediazine photoshopillustratordreamweaverindesignflash check   check check check check
layers photoshopillustratordreamweaverindesignflash check          
tutvid photoshopillustratordreamweaverfireworksflashbridge            
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allfreedownload   check check check check check check
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brusheezy       check      
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iconfinder         check    
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My Favorites

Here are other tools that I commonly use & find very practical. You can see these used in several of my projects.

arrow w3schools
w3schools.com offers free tutorials and code to help you build your website. They offer tutorials and scripting on html, css, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, ASP, PHP, SQL, etc.

arrow Colorbox
A light-weight, customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5. Colorbox is used in this website as the image and video viewer for my portfolio.

arrow Nivo Slider
"The world's most awesome jQuery slider." I used Nivo Slider on the homepage of Lakeshore Church. You can use your own images and change the dimensions of the slider.

arrow WordPress Audio Player
Simple and sleek flash audio player, that extents the player slider when one clicks play. I also used this on the Lakeshore Church website on the messages page.

arrow Fontface: font replacement
@font-face is a css rule which allows you to download a particular font from your server to render a webpage if the user hasn't got that font installed. This means that web designers will no longer have to adhere to a particular set of "web safe" fonts that the user has pre-installed on their computer.

arrow Color Hunter
Creates a custom color palate from an image you can upload, or search through the categories of color palates.

arrow Centricle: Encode/Decode HTML Entities
Converts text to HTML entities and vice-versa. It's usefor for captions when using Colorbox or similar lightbox.

arrow Creating a multi-resolution favicon
Add that final touch to your website by creating a custom favicon that appears in the website's browser.

arrow Fontstruct
Create your own font and save it as a .ttf for use on your own computer.

Recommended tools for Freelancers

arrow Behance Network
"The world's leading platform for creative professionals across all industries. Members create multi-media portfolios that showcase their work within the Network, as well as throughout partner sites and organizations, and the industry-specific Served Sites."

arrow Freelance Folder
"A community for freelancers, entrepreneurs, work-at-home business owners, and web-workers. We strive to bring you the articles, information, and community you need to succeed."

arrow Blue Sky Resumes
"A small team of resume writers and job search experts...We’ve written great resumes for almost every profession, but our main specialties are marketing, communications, design, technology, entertainment and sales. We especially love working with people who are creative or entrepreneurial by nature."

Recommended Periodicals

arrow Adweek
"The home for creative thought leaders and top agency influencers looking for the latest strategies, innovations and ideas. Online and print coverage extends beyond traditional advertising focus to topics ranging from new media to pop culture to design."

arrow Communication Arts
"The premier source of inspiration for graphic designers, art directors, design firms, corporate design departments, advertising agencies, interactive designers, illustrators and photographers—everyone involved in visual communication."

arrow CYMK
"The focus of CMYK Magazine is on giving our readers a truly inspiring visual experience. We fill each issue with the creative output of as many as 100 talented artists and designers at all levels of the creative talent pool."

arrow HOW
"Provides graphic-design professionals with essential business information, covers new technology and processes, profiles renowned and up-and-coming designers, details noteworthy projects, and provides creative inspiration."

arrow Print
"A bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design. Founded in 1940 by William Edwin Rudge, Print is dedicated to showcasing the extraordinary in design on and off the page."