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80+ Inspiring Quotes about Design | Design was here. These quotes will surely inspire, assist, motivate, and help every one about Design. Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose. — Charles Eames Everything is designed. Few things are designed well. — Brian Reed There is no design without discipline. €” Massimo Vignelli People ignore design that ignores people. — Frank Chimero I’ve always held to the belief that the practice of creating compelling graphic design occurs not by employing the principals of a democracy, but rather, that of a monarchy. — Thomas Vasquez Good design is obvious. €” Joe Sparano Every designers’ dirty little secret is that they copy other designers’ work. €” Aaron Russell The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong. — Marty Neumeier Visual design is often the polar opposite of engineering: trading hard edges for subjective decisions based on gut feelings and personal experiences.

Kuler. Special Characters. The 5 Best Free Tools For Making Slick Infographics. It's not enough to simply write about data any longer; the world wants visuals. While there are many professional information designers making a name for themselves, such as Nicholas Felton of Feltron.com, the majority of these digital artists are up to their eyeballs in high-paying work. Where does this leave you? Well, if you want to spruce up your documents, blog posts, and presentations, there are some free tools online that can help. Many Eyes This IBM Research tool gives you two choices: an option to browse through existing sets of data, or use your own.

Google Public Data Explorer Like IBM, Google has made a public version of one of its research tools. Hohli There are many occasions when a Venn Diagram is the perfect way to describe a concept or compare relationships among a few different things. Wordle Although this tool describes itself as a "toy" for generating word clouds, it can be an effective service to spruce up your work. Visual.ly Watch more Work Smart: [Images by Wordle] Free and Commercial Stock Photography Sites - Smashing Magazine.

Stock photography is often used in print and web design and has been around since the 1920s, when it was utilized by the newspaper industry. It has turned out to be such a common element to use now when designing, and has become more and more available, so that designers start using it on a daily basis. In the beginning there were only a few minor resources when it came to utilizing a variety of photos, but now as the times change and technology advances, so does the amount of resources in stock photography. Here are a handful of sites to check out when considering the use of stock photography on your next project. Free Stock Photography Sites Free Range Stock831Just sign up for a free membership, log in and download high-quality, high-resolution free stock photos and textures.

Every Stock Photo793Every Stock Photo is a search engine for free photos. MorgueFile5This site contains free high resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for either corporate or public use. Everystockphoto - searching free photos. Spring into Action Challenge | 5 Image Tips | Photography | Blogging. Photography is a powerful tool that can bring a lot of life to your blog posts. Adding just a little style can help keep readers engaged without becoming distracted by your images. You can also draw more relevant readers to your blog by taking advantage of image SEO. In both cases, you make find yourself wondering how to manipulate an image’s HTML code.

Don’t panic! Here are five tips to help you customize your blog images: Tip #1: Use Your HTML Editor The first step is being able to find the image HTML code to tweak it. To find your image code once you switch to the HTML editor, look for a word or phrase that exists near the image in your entry. Each value inside the tag is an attribute: src, width, height, alt and title. Tip #2: Resize Your Photos Whether you host your images on a site like Flickr or you upload them to your own blog’s dashboard, you probably only have a few sizing options and not all of these may work well for the post you’re creating. So what do I do? Twitter Backgrounds. I am a huge advocate of branding, and Twitter backgrounds can be a great way to do that. People will remember you if they recognize your footprint wherever it may be. My blog, Facebook fan page, business cards, post cards, netbook, email signature, Flip camera, and even my portable hard drive all bear my colors and logo.

I once lost my Flip at a conference (Type-A Mom actually), and the finder knew that it was mine because it had my name and logo on it. If you are serious about your brand, people will take notice. If you have someone design a logo or website for you, ask if they have a branding package deal. Or, if you are so inclined, you may choose to do it yourself. In either case, if you are on Twitter, your branding should shine there as well. However, if you are not a graphic artist or don’t want to pay, there are several sites out there that can help you achieve Twitter branding or just get a cool, colorful, and memorable Twitter background. Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) Episode 11: Creating an eBook with InDesign (Part 2) Background patterns and tiled background patterns. Repeating background patterns and images, patterns such as these can be used for a host of things such as a web page backgrounds, or adding that extra detail to a containing block, adjust the visibility and you’ve got a great new look for some thing that would normally look quite plain.

Here you’ll find some tutorials on how to create your own patterns and some resources to download patterns. Download Patterns Below are a few sites that have huge collections of background patterns for you to download and use for free. Brusheezy Patterns Deviantart Patterns Squid Fingers Patterns Pattern 8 Patterns Ava7 Din Pattern Everyday Icons Patterns Pattern Cooler k10k Pixel Patterns Noqta Patterns Make your own patterns online Make you own custom patterns online and downlaod them, or use someone elses as a base for you own creation. Stripe Mania Bg Patterns Stripe Generator Tutorials A collection of useful tutorials on how to create repeating background patterns of your own.

Other Resources about patterns. Thesis Customization. Hibiscus Creative is a longtime fan of the Thesis framework for WordPress . We’ve been using it since 2008, and one of our sites, Green Your Decor, was among the first to be featured in the Thesis showcase. This was in the days before hooks and custom functions, when Thesis was flexible, but not quite so much as it is now. We loved it then, and as it has evolved, we have evolved with it — so much that Hibiscus Creative is now an official Thesis designer. We love pushing Thesis as far as it will go, and we’ve designed and built more than a few websites that use it as a framework.

Examples Click the icons to view some of the dozens of Thesis-based sites we’ve designed and developed over the past few years. Are you convinced that we can take your Thesis-based site to the next level? 40 Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design - Smashing Magazine. 25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap!Tutorial Blog. Color Scheme Designer 3. Palettes.