List of Helpful Design Resources

Abduzeedo
Abduzeedo

A Design Blog filled with inspiration. Loads of delicious design finds across editorials, case studies, tutorials covering 3D / Branding / Illustration / NFT / Typography.

Behance
Behance by Adobe

Online Community for designers to create projects & showcase their work.

Designspiration
Designspiration

Helps your find ideas & inspiration. Discover & save art, design, architecture, photography, fashion, and web to buiod vision boards of projects you want to create.

Design Made In Japan
Design Made in Japan

DMIJ (Design Made in Japan) is an attempt to map the design landscape in Japan with the help of designers, bloggers/writers or otherwise design interested individuals.

Deviant Art
Deviant Art

An American online art community featuring artwork, videography & photography.

Dribbble
Dribbble

Online Community for Designers to showcase their work. Dribbble uses an invite-only membership system which helps to keep the work of a higher-standard.

iDN World
IdN

International Designers Network – of wow. It’s mission is to amplify & unify the design community from all parts of the planet – to bring designers together to learn from & inspire one another. It totally does what it says.

Instagram
Instagram

Does it need a following description? Ok. Umm it’s the most popular social media platform where you can probably scratch that obscure design niche itch you have. 

Pinterest
Pinterest

Fantastic for making mood-boards – we have about 1,000+ boards in there right now. Warning: you can get lost in the Pinterest matrix.

Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock

Integrates with all your Creative Cloud apps, making it easy to preview a stock illustration or vector within your designs and then license it if it fits your needs. A fantastic resource if you have Creative Cloud.

Shutterstock
Shutterstock

Features a vast amount of stock art among its ever-expanding collection of imagery. It is quite expensive compared to others.

iStock Photo
iStock Photo

A smaller version of its big sister, Getty. Not just photos but vector, icons, illustrations, video and often a lot of legacy items. We’ve probably spent most of our budgets on design resources here over the last decade.

Getty Images
Getty Images

This is an enourmous library that mainly deals with photography. It’s clean-cut and boasts high quality  professional images and it has a price tag to match.

Adobe Fonts
Adobe Fonts

A very powerful font library to have when you are signed up with Adobe Creative Cloud. It connects in with your Adobe Suite software which is great when you’re working with teams like we do.

Google Fonts
Google Fonts

An open source library of 1,429 font families. An interactive directory for browsing the library and API’s for using the fonts in your projects.

Type Hunting
Type Hunting

An on-going archive of found typography to inspire even non-designers.

I Love Typography
I Love Typography

A creative ecosystem that combines the world’s most popular typography blog with a new and innovative e-commerce platform reimagining font discovery and licensing.

Type Everything
Typeverything

A type foundry focusing on display fonts. You can license their fonts for use in your projects.

Typography Daily
Typography Daily

Your daily dose of type inspiration.

Flaticon
Flaticon

Download Free Icons and Stickers for your projects. PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats.

Font Awesome
Font Awesome

A font & icon toolkit based on CSS and Less. It was made for use with Bootstrap. Font Awesome can be downloaded from here.

Jasper AI

Jasper.ai

Artificial Intelligence making it faster to create content for your projects. Jasper helps us write all of our Design Academy content and it’s super helpful.

Grammarly

Grammarly

More AI power under the hood. Correct grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes on the fly keeping your copy free of errors before publishing.

Evernote

Evernote

Collect articles (and recipes), write notes and take screenshots using the app or evernote clipper through the browser plugin which is super helpful.

Udemy Learning

Udemy

A huge online course provider great for professionals to improve job-related skills. You can buy s single course or take a monthly subscription.

Linkedin Learning

LinkedIn Learning

Expert-led courses. Instructors with real-world experience. Formerly lynda.com and bought by Linkedin. We’ve had billing problems with these guys ie. taking money from our account with zero notice – just a heads up.

Youtube Learning

Youtube

Free learning? Yes please. If you can’t find your learning needs on Youtube, you’re either not looking hard enough or it doesn’t exist yet.

Domestika

Domestika

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Skillshare

Skillshare

An online learning community offering educational videos available through subscription.

Coursera

Coursera

A huge open online course provider by a couple of science professors from Standford University. Coursera works with other universities to offer online courses, certificates and degrees.

Gimp
Photoshop = GIMP

Maybe the better known free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and image editing, free-form drawing and transcoding between different file formats.

Krita
Photoshop = Krita

A free and open-source graphics editor for digital painting and 2D Animation.

Photopea
Photoshop = Photopea

A web-based photo and graphics editor used for making illustrations, web design or converting between file formats.

Affinity Photo
Photoshop = Affinity Photo

The closest to an Adobe Photoshop alternative there is (IMO) with a 1 time puchase cost instead of a never-ending subscription like Adobe.

Darktable
Lightroom = Darktable

Free and open-source photography program and raw developer aimed at non-destructive raw image post-production.

CaptureOne
Lightroom = Capture One Pro

Photo editing software for image editing, raw file processing and tethered photography.

Skylum Luminarai
Lightroom = Skylum’s Luminar AI

Works as a stand alone photo editing application and as a plugin for Adobe products.

Affinity Designer
Illustrator = Affinity Designer

A vector graphics editor marked as a true alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Best in class for creating concept-art, logo and icons, UI designs and loads more.

Gravit Designer Pro
Illustrator = Gravit Designer

Professional vector design app you can access from anywhere as it is browser based.

Inkscape
Illustrator = Inkscape

Many say this is best vector graphics editor to create scalable vector graphics (SVG) and other file formats can be used which is very important when youare transitioning.

Affinity Publisher
Indesign = Affinity Publisher

Desktop Publishing application for books, magazines and loads of other marketing materials like social media templates, website mock-ups nready for print or digital publication.

Scribus
Indesign = Scribus

Open-source Dekstop Publishing Application with professional publishing features like CMYK, spot colours, colour management and PDF creation. It’s even known to recover damaged documents.

Lucidpress
Indesign = Lucidpress

Web-based Desktop Publishing software for lyers, brochures, newsletters, business cards, posters, magazines and presentations.

QuarkXpress
Indesign = QuarkXPress

One of the originals. Powerful software creating complex page layouts like large scale publishing of books and magazines, newspapers and catalogues.

Xara Page Layout
Indesign = XARA Page Layout

All the tools needed to create business cards, calendars and a heap of other items using their in built templates.

Viva Designer
Indesign = Viva Designer

A strong alternative with both desktop and browser based applications with plenty of features rivalling everything you can do with Indesign.

Davinci Resolve
Premier Pro = Davinci Resolve

Starting as colour grading software it developed into one of the best non-linear video editing programs. In many ways it’s better than Adobe Premier.

Final Cut Pro
Premier Pro = Final Cut Pro

Super easy to use designed to maximise creativity and minimise fuss. The only problem is that it’s only available on Mac.

Filmora
Premier Pro = Filmora

Designed to be simple and quick with an easy to use interface.

HitFilm Pro
After Effects = HitFilm Pro

All-in-one video editing, visual effects and 3D compositing software for filmmakers and motion artists.

Fusion Studio
After Effects = Fusion Studio

Black Magic Design brings us yet another sophisticated visual effects software application. Said to be the world’s most advanced visual effects, VR, 3D and motion graphics solution.

Natron
After Effects = Natron

Free and open-source compositing software for VFX and motion graphics.