Five Favorite Design and Marketing Resources
|
There is a treasure trove of design and marketing resources readily available at our fingertips on the internet. We can find abundant inspirational content, skill-building tutorials, and tools for increased productivity. There are also many design assets available for download, including images, illustrations, vectors, video, audio, and design templates. With such vast offerings, finding the right resource can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. To help you with your search, I’ve curated a list of my favorites and combined them with recommendations from other experts.
I will share a comprehensive compilation of free or affordable resources at CreativePro’s upcoming Design + Marketing Summit, held online July 27–28. For now, I’ve handpicked five favorite resources from different categories.
AI Productivity
AI Tools List
An ongoing and evolving list of the most popular AI tools, portals, and apps for creative content producers and editors.
My first pick is an AI resource because, love it or hate it, AI is already changing every part of our daily workflows. This year, seemingly out of nowhere, AI exploded on the scene. In reality, AI has been assisting us for years. For example, Photoshop’s Select Subject feature was introduced in 2018. Today creative AI tools are everywhere. Keeping in front of this feels impossible. Jeff Foster, from the Provideo Coalition blog, makes it easier with his list of AI Tools for the creative industry. Make this your first stop on the journey to learn all you can about AI.
Skill Building
Behance
The latest live streams from leading creatives.
For continued learning and inspiration, I recommend tuning into Behance. Every day, creatives worldwide live stream their work on Behance. Past recorded presentations are also available on demand. Most of this learning content is free with an Adobe account.
Look for prerecorded live content from CreativePro family members. Search by instructor name and click on Streams (Figure 1). You’ll find recorded content from Tony Hamer, Lisa Carney, Jesús Ramirez, Mark Heaps, Kladi Vergine (Printmysoul), Monika Gause, Nicte Cuevas, Chana Messer, Paul Trani, Bart Van de Wiele, Angelo Montilla, Von Glitschka, Rob Zilla, and many more.
Figure 1. In B?hance you can search by instructor name and click the Streams button.
Inspiration
Rawpixel
The world’s best collection of public domain art and design resources.
I like to browse Rawpixel’s public domain section when I need a creative jumping-off point. Images found here have a CC0 license, meaning they are under no copyright restrictions. Everything is free to use as is or remixed into something new.
The William Morris collection is an excellent source of inspiration for pattern creation. With a slight crop, the green tulip from 1875 can be made into a seamless repeating Photoshop pattern (Figure 2).
Figure 2. William Morris Green Tulip (1875), shown as a Photoshop pattern
Also, check out Julie De Graag for beautiful vector line art illustrations (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Sunflower (1919) by Julie de Graag, converted to a vector shape with Adobe Capture
Adobe Capture makes the conversion to a vector shape easy. While you are there, use Capture to convert a colorful Kandinsky painting into a color theme for your next project (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Yellow-Red-Blue abstract painting by Wassily Kandinsky, with Adobe Capture color theme
Design Assets
Icon Duck
Free open-source icons & illustrations (no email address required)
I am embarrassed to admit how often I’ve chosen to create an icon with Illustrator instead of purchasing it from a vector stock site. Now that I have found Icon Duck, my days of reinventing the wheel (or a gear icon—Figure 5) are over. Icon Duck offers vector SVG files of the most popular icons for free.
Figure 5. Gear icon by Big Mug icons
Productivity
Grammarly
Bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly
Grammarly tops the list of productivity tools because who among us couldn’t use an occasional writing assist? I rely on Grammarly to catch common errors, such as subject-verb agreement, verb tense consistency, misspelled words, misplaced commas, and other punctuation mistakes. The free version works in email and web text fields, including Google Docs.
These five resources are just a sample taste of what is out there. I have so much more to share with you. Mark your calendars to join me at The Design + Marketing Summit, held online July 27-28, 2023, where I will share a valuable, comprehensive list of design and marketing resources. You don’t want to miss this!
 |