A typical long list consists of 30 items, and they went ahead and doubled that.  The other benefit is that they provided enough variety that you won’t have to go out and look for anything more.  Quit wasting your time reading anything more I have to write, and head on over to the post by clicking on the picture.

60 Free Vector Icon Packs by VectorTuts

They scoured the web and found some of the best articles for each subject matter and really put together an intuitive, lengthy post to cut your time considerably with repetitive tasks.  Let me stop wasting your time and just give you the screenshot so you can check it out for yourself.

PSDTuts' 30+ Useful Resources for Photoshop

We have created a short list of design sites that have updated content daily as they scour the web for the most popular information.  These sites can bring the design news to you instead of you spending too much time looking for it.

Google Reader

Any feed reader will do but I just happen to use the free feed tool by Google and I couldn’t live without it.  The reason a feed reader is the first choice is because you have control over what is added or deleted.  If you don’t have one set up already, here is a great list for design blog feeds:

Colorburned’s List of Design RSS Feeds

That link is worth checking out even if you currently have a Feed Reader to see if there are any design blogs that you might have missed.

Feed The Design

Don’t feel like setting up a feed reader account?  Just go to Feed the Design as an alternative that you can always access with Internet connectivity.

Design Float

Design Float is essentially a Digg for design.  The top design articles and news are submitted to the site by its users and voted up or down based on its popularity.  The best feature about the site is the fact that the most popular links are always fresh.

Design Bump

It is Design Float but with less traffic.  Although the two are so similar in function, it is still worth a mention because they don’t feature the exact same headlines.

These are just some suggestions for site that you may alread be aware of but are worth visiting daily. Sometime design inspiration can come from the written word too!

With the influx of design blogs, freebie websites, and design contests, we all need to find a way to aggregate this information in a way that we can digest it.  I just thought I would share with you the three different sources of aggregated design images that I use on a daily basis.  These three resources make it much easier for me to cruise through hundreds of pictures than going out and looking for them myself.

Design You Trust

This site is updated multiple times throughout the day and the variety is great because covers the gauntlet of design.  It is built on user submission, and that guarantees fresh images for inspiration. Recently the moderator has expressed concern on quality of the submissions and he is asking the community of members to decide on the course of action for improvement.

Design You Trust

DesignFlavr

Another user submission site filled with plenty of high quality images.  The coolest thing about this site is the ability to filter the results by genre, color, or popular tags.  It is a very easy way to find an effect or look that can drive your next design.

DesignFlavr

FFFFound

This is a site that I first came across after reading so many different designer interviews where they referenced FFFFound as one of their top five sites. They market themselves as an image bookmarking site, and it doubles as a simple way to get your portfolio out there.

FFFFound

Since each of the sites are powered by its community members don’t be shy and not get involved.  You can easily join these communities and submit some of your own work.  Just be sure to bring your A game when you do.

Design Shard T-Shirt Design Trends

The list is a good one, albeit short, and it’s easy to agree with those trends being hot. It is very rare that I walked in to a retail shop or cruise online t-shirt sites and not come across a skull shirt within the first five minutes. I’m pretty sure if we looked hard enough, we could probably find a t-shirt that has all five features incorporated into the design.

T-Shirt Design Trends

Please let us know in the comments section of a few other hot t-shirt design trends that you feel were omitted from the list.

First principle is Contrast; the idea behind contrast is to avoid elements that are similar on the page, the “rule” to remember is that it must be strong. If the elements (type, color, size, shape, space, line, thickness, etc) are not the same, the key is to make them very different. If you have two elements that are sort of different but not completely then you have created conflict, not contrast. For example, something like 14-point type contrasted with 12-point type is too close in size. A cool color with a warm color or a smooth texture with a rough texture is contrasting. Contrast can be considered the most important visual attraction on a page; it is the most effective way to add visual interest to your design. The keyword for contrast is “opposite”. Opposites could be some of the following examples: big text with small text, black text with white text, a hairline rule with a strong rule and a small graphic with a large graphic.

Second principle is Repetition; repeating visual elements of the design throughout the piece, anything that the reader will visually recognize, for example, it may be a bold font, a color, a certain bullet, line thickness, texture, spatial relationships, etc. This helps to give your design a cohesive look and feel, which probably makes it more likely to be viewed. The keyword for repetition is “consistency”. Consistency allows your design to appear like everything is meant to be there in perfect harmony without contradiction.

Third principle is Alignment; nothing should be placed on the page randomly, avoiding the issue of creating a design that has weak alignments. Every element on the page should have some sort of visual connection with another element on the page, being conscious of your design and not just throwing things onto the page wherever there is room. This helps to create a clean and fresh look to your design. The keyword in utilizing alignment is “unity”. Unity makes all the elements appear to be connected making a visual tie between all the elements.

Fourth principle is Proximity; items that relate to each other should be grouped closer together, often when beginners’ design, you see items placed all over the page, trying to fill up corners and take up the entire page to avoid that empty space feel. When these items that relate to each other are in close proximity to each other, they then become one visual unit rather than multiple units, it helps viewers to focus on the units that correlate with each other and gives the page a sense of organization and alleviates that feel of chaos and clutter. The keyword in utilizing proximity is “organize”. Organization will help to make your design more appealing and therefore people are more likely to remember it.

Knowing how to manage these four design principles will give you a sense of visual awareness and you will be creating dynamic, interesting, organized pages you can be proud to call your own.

Donelle Anderson is an accomplished web designer and has years of experience in managing, maintaining and developing web sites. She exhibits her organizational and creative abilities as the founder of Sandpiper Creation, a San Diego based web design and hosting company.

Here are 10 places where you spend the day working for Free that usually always have WiFi…

Library
Libraries are a great quite place to work from that offer free WiFi and great people watching. You’re always guaranteed to see any interesting mix of people and it might just inspire you to do something you might not have otherwise thought about. Throw on your headphones and zone into your own little world.

Bookstores
Like the library, bookstores almost always offer free wifi and are filled with an eclectic variety of people. I guess there’s just something about books & laptops that goes well together.

CoWork
Coworking is usually when a company will have extra desk space at their office, in which case they offer anyone in the local industry to come spend the day working in their offices. This is a great way to network and even pick up new client jobs. Ask around at industry events or do a simple Google search and I bet you can find a company in your area that offers this.

Friends Office
One great perk about having industry friends, or friends who work for themselves, is being able to work at their office from time-to-time. It’s nice to have like minded people you can be around to bounce ideas off of and gain inspiration from. Just make sure you work more than you play or it defeats the purpose.

Coffee Shop
Not many things go better than coffee and the internet. They’re a match made in heaven! The key here is to look for local coffee shops that offer free WiFi. Most big coffee chains, like Starbucks, charge for Internet access. Plus, local coffee shops usually have much better coffee and you’re helping support the local economy and small business owner.

University
You’ll probably only appreciate working from the University if your either young or single, or both. But if you choose this location be careful not to get too distracted by all the eye candy. Beside that, Universities are filled with a lot of culture in which to draw inspiration from.

Beach or Pool
If you live close to the beach or in an apartment complex that has a pool, take advantage and spend some days out in the sun working. You might get a nice tan. Just make sure you have a nice shady spot or the glare from the sun may prevent you from seeing your monitor.

Mountains
This may not work for everyone, but if you have wireless broadband access you may want to take an opportunity to go for a hike and work under a shady tree up in the mountains. There are probably not many other places that can give you the same kind of inspiration that the mountains can.

Wine Bar
Like coffee, wine is another thing that just seems to go so well with web design. Nothing beats sitting down with a glass of your favorite vino and hashing out a few hours of work.

Art Gallery/Museum
Not all art galleries and museums offer WiFi, and often times they can either be too small or too busy to work effectively from. But if you’re able to find one that offers both WiFi and a spot where you can sit down to work from, go spend a couple days there and you’ll appreciate what the culture, history, and talent will do for your work.

Are there any other places you like to go to so you can work outside the house?

Now I am not saying t-shirt printers are shady (I am a printer myself), but knowing the lingo will make sure no corners are cut and your t-shirts will come out looking great. Here goes:

Flashing
Have you ever seen the t-shirt color coming through an ink that is supposed to be solid? This is a result of skipping the process known as flashing during the print. Flashing is simply printing every ink twice so that the color comes out strong and solid. This process is only necessary on dark t-shirts.

Underbase
An underbase is an added step on dark t-shirts as well to make sure the colors are accurate. This can be used in addition to or in place of flashing. A true underbase is printing a whole layer of white underneath every part of the design that is going on the t-shirt.

Trapping
Trapping should be done during the design phase, and it is putting a very small stroke around certain colors of the artwork. The reason for doing this is twofold. One is to make sure the artwork completely covers an underbase and two is to prevent gaps in the registration. That simply means that the artwork will touch in all the places that it should.

Mesh
Mesh is something that you have less control over, but need to be aware of. We are referring to the material in the screen that allows ink to come through on to the shirt. If you have a lot of small detail in your artwork, then insist that the t-shirt printer uses screens with a higher mesh count.

Color Matching
Yes, color matching is exactly what it sounds like. We had to use it on here because we want to talk about particular colors. Almost all T-shirt printers use the Pantone Matching System or PMS for short when it comes to spot colors. Provide the printer with the PMS colors that you want by using them in your artwork.

I hope these terms come in handy for your next t-shirt screen printing project. It is certainly not rocket science, but knowing the lingo can help the t-shirt print come out as good as the artwork.

This was a guest post by: Blake is a t-shirt designer and printer at You Design It. His goal is to spread love in the world one t-shirt at a time.

In this Illustrator tutorial we will be creating a small family of characters call The Oh My’s. I encourage you to play with the sizes, shapes, and colors to design your own unique characters and then post your designs to the Designerside Flickr group.

I’m using Adobe Illustrator CS3 but pretty much any version of Illustrator (or any vector application for that matter) should be able to accomplish all of these steps.

Before we get started, here is the final image we will be creating.

Step 1

Create a new document and set the size to 792px by 612px.

Step 2

Now we’ll start creating the first character. First, using your Rectangle Tool, create a rectangle. I did one 185px x 240px in dimension. Then, with the shape you just created selected, go to Effect > Stylize > Round Corners… and set the Radius to 50px. The benefit to doing it this way as opposed to just using the Rounded Rectangle Tool is you can make adjustments to the radius of the rounded corners later on if you’d like.

You should now have something similar to this:

Step 3

Next we need to create the upper half of the head. Using the Ellipse Tool create a circle that is 135px x 135px. You can set specific dimensions by just doing a single click on your document with the tool. A window will pop up that will let you set the exact dimensions.

After you’ve created the first circle, position it in the top left corner of the rectangle. Duplicate the circle and move it to the other side.

You should have something similar to this:

Step 4

We’ll now create the legs. The process for this is fairly similar to Step 3. Grab the Rectangle Tool and create two legs. Then use the method mention in Step 2 to add rounded corners to the legs.

Step 5

Before adding additional detail, we need to merge all of the shapes we’ve created thus far. Select all of the shapes in your document, then in the Pathfinder palette select “Add to shape area” and then click “Expand”.

We’ll then go ahead and add some color to the new shape. We’ll be creating a red gradient. The lighter color will be #F26A5D and the darker color will be #EF414D. Select the shape and fill it with the gradient. I set the lighter color position to 50% and the Type to Radial.

Step 6

Let’s create the eyes now. What we’ll do is just completely create one eye and then duplicate it and move it over for the other eye. For this step the only tool we’ll be using is the Ellipse Tool.

First create the white of the eye as an egg shape (fill the shape with white). Next create the iris as another egg shape. This time fill with a gray color. And then after that create some reflection in the eye by adding two small white circles within the iris.

We’ll also add a simple shadow below the eye by duplicating the main eye shape, placing it behind the eye and nudging it down a few pixels. Fill the shadow shape with solid black and then set the Transparency to 20%.

Step 7

Now we’ll create the mouth. First create a simple circle and placing it in the center of the character. Next we’ll create a set of upper and lower teeth. We do this by putting to rounded rectangles next to each other and merging the shapes. You then create another circle shape and place it behind your “teeth”. So you might have something similar to this:

You then select “Intersect shape areas” from the Pathfinder menu and then Expand that. Doing this gives the teeth a rounded top so it fits in the circle. You then duplicate and flip the teeth and put them at the bottom.

Step 8

Next create the belt. First create the belt buckle with the Ellipse Tool and then after that we’ll create the belt itself by using the Pen tool. Try to add a bit of curve on the ends to make it look more like it’s going around the figure.

Step 9

To finish off the figure, we’ll give him some simple shoes. First create circles over the feet like so:

Then draw a rectangle over the circles where you’d want to cut the circles. Select the two circles and then group them and then select the grouped circles and the rectangle. Click “Subtract from shape area” in the Pathfinder palette and click Expand.

Step 10

We’ll now create the background. It’s really simple.

First, using the pen tool create the ground and fill it with a green color.

Next just use the rectangle tool to create the sky and move the shape behind the grass layer. Fill the sky with a light blue gradient.

At this point, you’ve basically finished the project. As you can see from my final image, you can create variations of the character simply by duplicating the figure and changing the colors and size.

Feel free to download the Illustrator file for this tutorial to pick it apart a bit more. Also, be sure to post your completion (and varations) of this to the Designerside Flickr Group!