I have used every one of these resources as a graphic designer and website developer and have hand picked all of these resources based on their usefulness and overall quality.
I hope you find these resources as useful as I do! Enjoy!
Organizations
1. http://www.gag.org/
The Graphic Artists Guild promotes and protects its members and is committed to improving conditions for all graphic designers and the whole industry. They also produce the well known Graphic Artists Guild Handbook which is an essential part of any designers library.
AIGA, the professional association for design is dedicated to protecting and advancing design and its importance to society. AIGA now represents more than 19,000 designers through national activities and local programs developed by more than 55 chapters and 200 student groups.
Education
3. http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/
Guide To Online Schools is an education directory that specializes in online degrees, online schools, and distance learning. They showcase a variety of accredited online schools that you can get your graphic design degree from.
Getdegrees features the nations best online degrees from over 300 colleges. As as designer, you can find accredited art degrees online from such schools as The Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online Division & Westwood College Online.
5. http://www.graphic-design-schools.org/
Graphic Design Schools is your unofficial guide to getting into a graphic design school.
6. http://www.artdesignschools.com/
Art Design Schools provides an extensive list of campus based and online art schools.
7. http://www.computer-schools.org/
Computer Schools is a great blog that focuses on helping people land careers in computers.
Generally Useful
This is a pretty famous site within the design community; you can generate dummy text on this site to put into your designs until the real copy is available.
Best Web Gallery is a great website if you are looking for the best Flash and CSS websites.
An incredibly useful site that shows you exactly how web fonts will look on your screen.
11. http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/
This is the ultimate branding library with thousands of the worlds most famous and popular logos. Great for researching corporate identity.
Bloglines is a great way to organize all the blogs you read into one place instead of having to visit a bunch of different websites and is a good time saver.
Arguably the best web browser out right now. I use it for most of my web browsing but don’t forget the other browsers when it comes to optimizing your website. Not everyone uses the same browser.
14. www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
This is my favorite email client to use. It’s simple, efficient, and easy to use with solid email alert features. Very handy if you get important emails often.
Home to the well known design software we all know and love. Good site to check out once in a while for updates and help regarding software such as Photoshop and illustrator.
Networking & Freelance Work
16. http://www.craigslist.org/
Craigslist is one of my favorite forums to use. There are tons of new design jobs and gigs added every day but the competition is stiff so bring your “A” Game.
17. http://www.getafreelancer.com/
If you are looking for an affordable but professional coder this is the place to go. Freelancers bid on projects you post.
Linkedin is a very popular site for professionals and is a valuable networking tool.
Krop.com has a database of jobs for designers, artists, and developers with an instant and easy to use search feature.
Corofloat.com is a site where you can promote and host your design portfolio, search for jobs and post to hire some one.
Stock Photography
21. http://www.istockphoto.com/
This stock photography site has incredible photographers and even better prices for illustrations and photos. It will make your life way easier as a designer and has many other benefits such as making money selling your illustrations and photography, networking with other design professionals, promoting your portfolio site, access to active forums and much more!
Corbis is one of the leading stock photography sites with millions of images online, featuring historical, fine art, business, technology, celebrity, travel, sports and nature photography.
23. http://www.shutterstock.com/
Shutter Shock is a subscription based stock photography site with over two million royalty-free stock photos available.
24. http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
Big Stock Photo lets you upload and download low-cost digital stock photography. They have well over a million photos organized into categories.
25. http://www.gettyimages.com/
Getty Images offers a large searchable collection of rights-managed or royalty-free images and films. Getty Images is a great site if you are looking for current event and public figure related photography.
Color & Charts
26. kuler.adobe.com
Kuler is a useful site to go to find color themes for your projects. Users can submit their own themes to be rated and you can search for many type of color themes.
27. http://www.colourlovers.com/
Colour Lovers is a great site with user submitted color palettes and even cooler is their blog that creates color palettes based on each blog posts at the end of every post.
28. http://www.logoorange.com/
Nice chart that converts PMS colors to CMYK and RGB color codes for you.
This extremely useful but simple web safe color chart lets you easily see exactly how different colors will look on your screen.
Inspirational Sites
30. http://www.cssbeauty.com/
CSS Beauty provides its users with a database of well designed CSS designed sites, as well as news and happenings related to the CSS Community.
31. http://www.thecoolhunter.net/
The cool hunter looks for the coolest and craziest stuff from around the world. Be sure to check out the design and art sections on the site.
The Logo Pond is a great site to go to if you are looking for inspiration while designing a logo. You can even submit your own logo designs to be voted on and reviewed. Good way to get exposure for your studio or freelancing portfolio.
The Web 2.0 Design style is the big thing right now and many websites are redesigning their look to get with the times. This awesome site has a massive collection of all the new web 2.0 logos and links the websites.
CSS Vault has a collection of spectacular CSS websites and resources including: Articles, Demos, Layouts, Tutorials, and more.
35. http://www.stumbleupon.com/
After selecting topics of interest you can stumble upon quality sites related to those topics. I have found countless amazing sites doing this and not only is it great for finding new sites but it can be a killer way to promote and drive traffic to your own portfolio site or blog.
Portfolio Sites
36. http://www.altpick.com/
Altpic.com is a great portfolio website for artists and designers where many people come searching for the best oif the best. It is a great place to showcase your designs and talent.
37. http://www.portfolios.com/
Portfolios.com is a portfolio search site where viewers can easily browse through thousands of free artist and designer portfolios.
38. http://www.deviantart.com/
DeviantART is a large community of artists and designers who share their work with each other via an online portfolio. Many digital artists and illustrator flock to this site and you can even buy prints of your favorite artwork.
Design Magazines
39. http://www.printmag.com/
PRINT magazine is a very famous bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design.
HOW Magazine covers many areas of design such as the business aspect, new technologies, up and coming designers and is a place for creative inspiration.
I.D. magazine is an International design magazine that covers products, graphics, environments, interactive media and other design related areas.
42. http://www.computerarts.co.uk/
Computer Arts is an informative site with free downloads, tutorials, galleries, competitions, a published magazine and much more.
MacLife.com provides news and analysis of the popular Apple products and also has daily blogs from Mac Life magazine editors and a nice selection of articles to read.
This magazine is definitely handy for any designer. The hardware we use is the back bone of most of our work and PC Magazine has solid reviews of the leading equipment. I always look up products on their website before I buy anything.
PC World is a great place for Computer and Internet news and information, Resources, how-tos, downloads, products and more.
Fonts
46. http://www.dafont.com/
Dafont is an easy to use free font site with a large collection of fonts to download it. It has been around a while and is updated often with new fonts.
47. http://www.urbanfonts.com/
Urban Fonts is new to the font world but has quickly established itself as a leader in the free font community. It has an excellent design and is right up there with dafont.com in my book.
Font Shop offers great font collections on CD, free fonts, downloadable fonts, typography tips and more.
Linotype has a massive collection of the most popular and well known fonts available for download. They also have a font lounge with many interesting font related resources.
Tutorials
50. http://www.pixel2life.com/
Pixel2life is one of the largest tutorial search engines on the internet providing great tutorials to graphic designers and programmers.
51. http://www.good-tutorials.com/
Good Tutorials is a massive tutorial website with tens of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and more.
If you need to brush up on your coding skills then this is the place to go. The information is accurate and up to date and its def worth taking all the tutorials.
53. http://www.tutorialoutpost.com/
Tutorial Outpost has a vast collection of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, 3D Studio Max, and more!
Photoshop Brushes
54. http://www.brusheezy.com/
Brusheezy is a very useful site with lots of great sets of free brushes varying in style.
PS Brushes is home to over 500 Photoshop brushes that are all free to download and categorized for easy searching.
56. http://www.getbrushes.com/
Get Brushes has sets of Photoshop brushes made up of various swirls, ornamental designs, and flourishes. flowers, dots, circles, and various other ornamentations.
Printers
57. http://www.4over4.com/
4over4 is a good balance between quality and affordability and can handle most of the print jobs you would require.
58. http://www.modernpostcard.com/
Modern postcard is known for its quality printing but can be a bit pricey compared to other sites. If you are looking for top notch printing though look no further.
59. http://www.vistaprint.com/
Vista Print provides custom full color printing services. You can print business cards, Christmas cards, stationery, postcards, magnets, brochures, address labels, and even more.
60. http://www.clubflyers.com/
Club Flyers is an easy to use online printing service with many options available and fast shipping times.
61. http://www.alocalprinter.com/
If you are looking for a way to help the environment as a graphic designer then check out the new age of eco friendly printing.
Blog Hosts
62. http://www.wordpress.com/
Wordpress is my blog host of choice. It’s free and easy to set up on a server and there are tons of great themes and widgets available to use. I use Wordpress for all my blogs.
Blogger is another very popular blog host. It has many of the same features Wordpress offers.
Twitter is a surprisingly fun, easy to use and useful site when it comes to letting people know what you are up too.
Squidoo is an easy way to put up a quick and free website page about any topic you want. It is very popular in the affiliate marketing industry.
Tumblr is another super easy blogging tool that is very similar to Squidoo and twitter and just as good as both of them.
Blogs
67. http://www.designobserver.com/
Design Observer is a well respected site in the design community that features writings related to all aspects of design and culture.
This great site is dedicated to hacking your life by providing you with tips and tricks to get things done quickly by automating, organizing and increasing your productivity.
69. http://www.ilovetypography.com/
I Love Typography is a great web site devoted to typography, type, fonts and typefaces of all kinds. If you love typography you will enjoy this site.
Web Hosting
70. http://www.hostgator.com/
Host Gator is a well known, reliable and affordable web hosting company. They have a wide range of hosting services to take care of all your websites bandwidth needs.
Go Daddy is one of the biggest and most affordable web hosting and domain registration services. They have excellent customer service and quality servers. It is also very easy to mange you domain names and this is important if you have a lot of them.
Web Design Forums
72. forums.digitalpoint.com
This is one of the biggest and most popular programming forums around; there are many thread topics raging from coding and servers to search engine optimization and graphic design. It’s a great place to ask questions, find help or promote your services.
73. http://www.webmasterworld.com/
This is a very active and informative forum on the world of web design. It is a great place to learn and have questions answered.
Graphic Design Forums
74. http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/
This is a discussion forum dedicated to all topics related to graphic design.
75. http://www.graphic-design-forum.com/
This is another active design forum that allows you to chat about graphic design and post designs for a review.
76. http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/
This is a fine art and graphic design forum where many users showcase their work and discuss fine art and graphic design with fellow community members.
Keyword Research
77. http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
This is an extremely important free tool for keyword research. If you don’t use this tool before you launch a site or blog then your missing out. They also have a more extensive paid version.
This is another powerful keyword research tool.
Google Trends is another good way to research keywords. Some keywords tend to be seasonal so you can check to see if certain keywords tend to fluctuate traffic wise at certain times of the year.
Search Engine Optimization
80. http://www.seomoz.org/
SEOmoz serves as a central hub for search engine marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services related to search engine optimization and marketing.
81. http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/
This is probably one of the most informative sites I have ever come across in terms of search engine optimization. It literally changed my life.
82. http://www.seroundtable.com/
SEO Roundtable reports on interesting threads taking place at the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) forums. They also write many articles on the topic of search engine optimization and marketing.
Advertising
83. www.google.com/adsense
Google Adsense is a powerhouse in the advertising industry. If you are looking for an easy way to monetize our website or blog then you will definitely want to check this site out.
Adbrite is a popular and easy to use text link advertising website where you can buy text link spots or make money by selling advertisement space on your site.
A place to buy and sell text link ads on popular websites related to your website or blog.
86. http://www.text-link-ads.com/
This is another very popular and easy to use text link advertising site where people can easily purchase advertising space on your blog or website.
Computers & Electronics
87. http://www.apple.com/
Apple computers are a standard in the design industry and they are a great choice if you are looking for an alternative to personal computers.
I love checking new egg for products because of their fair prices and customer reviews.
89. http://www.tigerdirect.com/
Another great site if you are shopping for anything electronic. They have affordable prices and a wide selection of products to choose from.
Amazon is fast and reliable and is my favorite online store to buy books from. Delivery is always top notch.
Art Supplies
91. http://www.dickblick.com/
Dick Blick Art Materials has been providing artists with the best supplies since 1911. They have a huge selection of merchandise and good prices.
92. http://www.pearlpaint.com/
Pearl Paint is one of the world’s largest discount art suppliers and has a vast selection of art supplies at very affordable prices.
93. http://www.aifriedman.com/
A.I. Friedman is another great business that has been serving the artist community for over 70 years. Their products range from basic art supplies to studio equipment and furniture.
Graphic and Web Design Books
94. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul By Adrian Shaughnessy
95. Thinking with Type By Ellen Lupton
96. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of Typography By David Jury
97. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook By Graphic Artists Guild
98. HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition By Elizabeth Castro
99. Bulletproof Web Design By Dan Cederholm
Conclusion
I hope you have found all these resources helpful and inspiring and we look forward to brining you more resources in the future. Good Luck!!!
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