Design Resources

http://design.tutsplus.com/

Browse thousands of free tutorials to help you learn and expand your graphic design and illustration skills. Tutsplus provides an extensive resource every design student should utilize. They also provide video-based course and ebooks. The step-by-step tutorials are easy to understand and most of the posts provide screenshots with descriptions on how to effectively achieve the “how-to.”

http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes

The colourlovers website provides a neat and organized solution to color combinations. Instead of spending hours picking, choosing, trying, and testing different shades and hues, the colourlovers website can be utilized for quick color combination solutions. Although they are user-created palettes the colors combinations can be useful when you’re under a tight deadline.

https://www.typewolf.com/

The type wolf is a great resource to utilize when you are struggling to choose fonts for a design project. The website showcases various types performed on actual websites. The designer Jeremiah Shaof shares this website as a resource for everything related to typography on the web. The Typography Cheatsheet (under ‘Guides & Resources) is an extensive and comprehensive guide to using proper typographic characters, including correct grammatical usage.

 

good & bad letterspacing/kerning

The photo below is an example of “good” letterspacing/kerning: “Priority Mail.” The type below provides an appropriate amount of spacing within each letter. The letters are not touching or overlapping eachother. The adjustment of space between the letters are thoroughly balance and share proper amount of spacing below/above the two words.

IMAG1643

The photo below is an example of “bad” letterspacing/kerning: “How to Draw Comics.” The type below provides an inappropriate amount of spacing within each letter. The letters are touching and overlapping each other. Although the style of the typography seems appropriate for the material in this book, the letters are extremely tight and compressed and could use letterspacing. The words would be completely illegible and lost without the dark black stroke and blue shadows.

IMAG1641