We love prowling the web for the latest trends and design inspiration. Here we have composed a list of common resources we use. The primary focus of this list is inspiration, it can come from a photograph, font, or a website. The secondary focus is improving your design skills, which can be done by keeping up to date with tutorials and reading other graphic design blogs. We hope you enjoy our personal list of great sites, and we will be adding to this list in the coming weeks and months as there are a lot of great new sites coming online every other day now.

OUR LATEST DESIGN RELATED SITES:

Free Vector Art Files

Free photoshop file downloads

Css website gallery nature based

Free website templates downloads

Free Stock Photos and Templates

Free Font Downloads

Free Fonts and Other Resources: Web Page Publicity
Huge Collection of Free Fonts: Da Font
Nice Selection of Free Fonts: Urban Fonts
Fonts and Other Freebies: Simply The Best Fonts
1001 Free Fonts for Download: 1001 Free Fonts
Over 9000 Free Fonts: Creamundo
A Small List of Free Fonts: Best Free Fonts

Paid Font Sites

A Large Selection of Fonts for Purchase: My Fonts
Quality Fonts for Purchase: Veer
Information and Fonts for Purchase: Fonts
Font Resources and Sales: Font Haus

Stock Photos and Vectors

The Best Stock Photo and Vector Website
Quality Photos for Purchase: Shutterstock
Stock Photos and Other Pay Downloads: Veer
Quality, Affordable Vectors for Purchase: Vector Stock
Stock Photos With a Great Selection: Jupiter Images
Stock Photos and Photography Network: Stock Vault
Quality Stock Photos: Corbis
Free Stock Wedding Photos Wedding Photographer Victoria Vancouver BC

Free Photos and Vectors

Submit Vectors or Download Others for Free: Free Vector Art
Tons of Great Free Vectors and Photos: Deviant Art
59 Pages of Free Vector Art: Free Vectors
Quality Vector Downloads: Vector 4 Free
Neat Collection of Free Photos From Around the World: Free Stock Photos
Great Collection of Free Vectors and Resources: You The Designer
Great Free Stock Photos: Free Foto
A List of Free Downloads: Bittbox
700 Free Stock Photos: Free Picture Click

Website Templates

A Few High Quality Wordpress Themes: Evan Eckard
Over 2000 Free Web Templates: OSWD
A Large Selection of Nice Templates: Free Website  Templates
A Large List of Free Templates: Free CSS Templates
Nice Wordpress Templates for Download: Free CSS Templates
A Combination of Free and Pay Templates: Free Templates Online
Affordable, Quality Templates: Templamatic
Free Blog Templates: Blogging Themes

CSS Galleries

The Best Nature Sites on the Web: CSS Nature Website Gallery
A Frequently Updated Gallery of Sites: CSS Mania
An Organized List of Nice Sites: Most Inspired
CSS Gallery of Quality Sites: CSS Design Yorkshire
A Selection of Only Nature Based Sites: CSS Nature
A Selective List of Well Designed Sites: Web Creme
High Quality CSS Showcase: CSS Tux
Nice CSS Websites: The Designed Tree
A CSS Collection Organized by Category: CSS Elite

Inspiration

A Great Site About Everything Type: I Love Typography
An Incredible Illustrator: Burst of Beaden
A Great Designer and Illustrator: Fully Illustrated
Customizable List of Design Resources: Cork Dump
The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada: GDC
Freelance Advice Blog and Resources: Freelance Switch
Amazing Collection of Logos: Logopond
Stunning Desktop Wallpapers: Desktopography
A Graphic Design Magazine: Computer Arts

Tutorials

The Best Photoshop Tutorials: PSD Tuts
A Talented Photoshop Designer: Abduzeedo
Photoshop Tutorials and Web Design Resources: Web Design Library
Tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator and More: Tutorial Vault
A Few Neat Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials: Design Spice
Great Photoshop Tutorials and Downloads: PS Wish
Tutorials for Every Computer Program: Tutorialing

Free Photoshop Downloads

A Couple Free Patterns for Download: Design Spice
Free Photoshop Brushes: Design Fruit
Free Photoshop Actions: Visual Blast
Tons of Free Photoshop Brushes: Brusheezy
A Few Nice Free Photoshop Brushes: Obsidian Dawn
Great Grunge Brushes and Others: Photoshop Brushes
Free Background Patterns for Photoshop: Free BG
Over 150 Free Background Patterns: Squidfingers

Design Blogs

A Frequently Updated Design Blog: Veerle’s Blog
A Design Magazine and Blog: Smashing Magazine
A European Design Blog: Design In Europe
A Unique Nerdy Blog: Design You Trust
The Personal Blog of a Graphic Designer: Larissa Meek
A German Design Blog: David Hellmann
The Blog of a Canadian Geek/Model: Mostly Lisa
A Graphic Design Blog: Bittbox
A Blog About Freelance Graphic Design Advice: Freelance Switch
A Design Blog Full of Resources: You The Designer
A Popular Design Blog: Fazai 38

Colour Palettes

A Flash Site of User Generated Colour Palettes: Adobe Kuler
Using Colours From Photos: Colr
Colours, Palettes and Patterns: COLOURlovers
A Colour Palette Generated From Your Images: Color Palette Generator
See The Results of Your Palette on a Website: Color Spire
Create and Email Colour Palettes: Color Blender

Tips and Tricks

Vector Do’s and Dont’s: iStockphoto
The Web Design Polish: PSD Tuts
Promote Your Design Business: Freelance Switch
How To Increase Web Traffic: You The Designer

Coders

$50 per page awesome psd to xhtml DROPNCHOP.COM (We recommend them, and use them)
Quality Programming: XHTMLized
Professional Web Slicing: PSD Slicing
Affordable, Quality Coding: PSD2HTML
From Design to Code, Quick and Cheap: Front Enders

Designer Geek Merch

Great Nerdy Clothing and Accessories: Veer
Nice T-Shirt Collection: Designer T-Shirts
Graphic Design T-Shirts and Accessories: Cafepress
Geek Merchandise For Everyone: Think Geek
Graphic Design T-Shirts: Zazzle
Unique T-Shirt Designs You Can’t Find Anywhere Else: Allmightys
Web Templates

Newly added resources

A great new marketplace for stock graphic design: Inkd.com
A fantastic resource for finding information on corporate brand identity: Brands of the World
We just launched a fun eco focused site ecoki.com
Our Free Vector File Site is launched.
Free Photoshop File Downloads

We are excited to launch the first site on the Slurp Network today. Design Slurp is a site dedicated to the design community. We feature some of the top blogs, galleries, magazines, and tutorials all in one home page.

We have a ways to go with this site and will be updating the site with more sites and information in the coming months. Please feel free to send us your feedback on how we can make this design home page even better!

Visit DesignSlurp.com

The main above the fold shows the Slurp Network drop down, as well as the latest in design news today.

We love PSDTUTS and had to add their latest tutorials to the main page..

Our favorite quality CSS design site Best Web Gallery was chosen for the latest sites.

If you would like to send us feedback, or inquire about advertising rates. Please email contact@enviramedia.com

View our latest launches

Ecoki.com The Eco Community
Applereviews.com The site for everything apple
Enviramedia.com Environmental Investment Group
Designslurp.com The home page for designers and illustrators
Tweethawk.com Nature Based Twitter Backgrounds

Applereviews.com provides you with up-to-date information, news, reviews, and articles about everything Mac-related.

From the latest news to the most recent obscure app, our mission is to develop a comprehensive hardware and software information destination, with daily published featured articles. We strive to bring you the best information possible, whether its in a detailed review, the newest hardware, or simply a useful tip.

Our passion and drive is based on for bringing you the best of Mac; hatched mid-2008, our goal is to swiftly grow into a top internet resource for all things Apple. Designed and Developed by Studio 7 Designs Inc, with help from wefunction on the Wordpress Design.

We welcome your opinion, ideas, and recommendation; please contact us or visit our contribution page for more information on how you can get involved!

Visit AppleReviews.com

We find it very helpful to build on our current design skill sets on a daily basis. An excellent resource site we have found (and check daily) is a site called PsdTuts. They offer Photoshop tutorials, inspiration, articles and an entire community of design related people. Another great design resource if you have time to check it out is the Flickr stream of user submitted artwork and completed tutorials.

Here we have composed a list of a few tutorials from PsdTuts that you might find useful when doing web and logo design.

How to construct a 3D shelf element in Photoshop

Our first recommendation is Creating a 3D Shelf Element, which is useful when designing a unique website. Even if your aren’t interested in creating a shelf element, this tutorial provides some neat tips on creating dimension.

How to create a brushed metal serface in Photoshop

The next tutorial we think you might find useful is Creating a Brushed Metal Surface. This tutorial is fantastic when creating a modern metallic logo for a client, or adding details to existing elements in web design.

How to create a slick web 2.0 footer in Photoshop

This next tutorial Creating a Web 2.0 Footer is a must read for any web designer. Not only does it have a link to a fantastic Web 2.0 Gradients package, but it provides inspiration for creating professional website footers.

How to create a textured tag element in Photoshop

This tutorial, Creating a Textured Tag, is fantastic when you need to come up with a different way of displaying a logo in a client’s website. It will also show you how to create details that give your designs a polished look.

How to create a wood texture in Photoshop

This Creating a Wood Texture tutorial is a great addition to your toolkit. With the growing trend of environmentalism and creating a natural, organic feel for websites, this is a valuable skill to understand.

Final thoughts
We hope you enjoy the site as much as we do. Doing tutorials can greatly improve your Photoshop skills and going to PsdTuts as part of your daily routine is a great way to accomplish that.

The importance of building a congruent color palette for web design is paramount. A person’s eye will automatically make judgments on color based upon their human instinct. Green is seen as a representative of nature, purple reflects that of royalty, and white portrays a feeling of neutral calm and so forth. When selecting your own color scheme from a photo, online color palette generators can be a helpful tool to work with.

In order to do it from scratch, you will need a good photo with the feeling you are trying convey and maybe only two strong colors. Start off by choosing the most vibrant color, then the second most vibrant to compliment the first. The remaining three colors to select will be less saturated and designed to balance the first two. This is a tricky thing to do, so if it doesn’t give you the result you are looking for the first time, keep practicing, and maybe choose another photo.

Online color palette generators each provide a different result. The best way to find the one for you, is to try the same image in all of them, to see who gives you the results you are looking for.
Below are some examples using DeGraeve.com

The fantastic thing about this color palette generator is that not only can you use your own image, but the results provide you with a selection of five dull and five vibrant colors to choose from.

Some of Our Favorite Color Links

A warm thank you to Ben Nelson for the butterfly photograph

DEGRAEVE.COM
The fantastic thing about this colour palette generator is that not only can you use your own image, but the results provide you with a selection of five dull and five vibrant colours to choose from.

COLOURLOVERS.COM
This article is a long time favorite. Eighteen different colour palettes chosen entirely from butterflies. It is really a spectacular resource to check out.

BIGHUGELABS.COM
Here is a colour palette generator with some flexibility. Choose a photo from Flickr, Photobucket, a URL, or upload one right from your computer.

WPDFD.COM
An in-depth article about the use of colour and palettes on the web.

COLORHUNTER.COM
Upload your own photo to automatically create a colour palette, and view other people’s results. You can also join the community and save your favorite colour palette’s.

WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER VICTORIA
Our wedding photography company has locations in Victoria and Vancouver BC Canada.

How did you enter the world of graphic design?
I’ve always been interested in design. Even when I was a child, I loved to draw and had an eye for detail and colours. I didn’t go down the traditional route of university. Instead, I taught myself how to use programs such as Photoshop and Cinema 4d to create art, and eventually built up a basic portfolio of work. I then applied for jobs locally and now am a graphic designer for a small company.

What inspires you to create such amazingly positive work?
It’s been a bumpy road to get to a point where I’m confident in myself to publish what is positive in my art. I think it’s a quality which is inspired by others, love, and general happiness which I get from making the art itself. I love to look at a piece of my art and if it makes me happy, it usually goes online!

What techniques do you use to create movement in your designs?
I think it’s just knowing the tools and planning what the idea of the composition is about. To create movement, you need a good sense of space, and colouring and blending between different areas of the design. It’s good to drive a person from one end of the canvas to the other, which can be done in a variety of ways, from light streaks in my case, to simple flow.

What are your goals for the future? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I’m always looking for ways to better myself and drive myself forward. In the last three years, I feel I have progressed beyond what I ever expected with my work and art, so who knows what the future holds. All I know is that I’ll be having fun making my future into something I enjoy!

What advice do you have for those just starting out?
Working freelance can be hard. One week it can be very quiet and another week it can be hectic. I think it’s finding a balance of work which you feel you can handle, and coming to time agreements with your clients which you are both happy with. It’s great to be able to pick the work you do. However, sometimes you have to settle for jobs you don’t particularly enjoy, but that’s part of the learning experience. I’m currently bombarded with work from various clients, but I’m in a position where I’m able to select what I feel I’ll enjoy rather than what will pay the most money. I think if you’re just starting out, it’s good to have a solid base of people wanting to hire you for your skills, a good portfolio and a style which stands out. It’s always good to take time out to develop your personal style which will help others see what you enjoy doing, and hopefully you’ll get hired for it!

Visit Adam Woodhouse Design Portfolio

Once in a while we come across a fantastic website that we find very helpful in our daily reading. Deziner Folio is a blog full of fantastic design resources with an emphasis on tips, tricks, and downloads. The site is run by a talented photographer who understands composition and colour theory, and how to apply those elements to design. Check out the Flickr stream for examples of some amazing photography.

Here’s a brief list of some areas of interest that we found very useful for web and graphic design:

Simple Photographic Results in Photoshop

If you’re new to editing photos, or are just looking to expand your bag of Photoshop tricks, this post is for you. The focus here is on four different ways to enhance images: Overlay, Gradient Map, Levels, and Curves. Also, as an added bonus, all of the actions described are offered as a free download.

Ultimate Web 2.0 Layer Styles Download

One of our absolute favourite resources on this site is the free download of a custom Web 2.0 Photoshop Layer Styles set. When doing web design, achieving the perfect Web 2.0 look is very important. These styles will speed up the design process by having this glossy look achieved in one click.

A Great Approach to CSS and XHTML Coding

For all of the coders out there, this post describes a great way to organize your CSS files. This is a major issue for a lot of companies when files are getting passed around because everyone needs to be able to find what they’re looking for in order to keep things moving forward in a timely manner.

Top 50 Super Cool Free Icon Sets

This post features 50 cool free icon sets. This is a great way to personalize your computer and avoid having to use the default icons. Another great use for these is to jazz up website navigation by representing each section with an icon beside the navigation text.

We hope you enjoy exploring this site. There are many useful posts that link out to other blogs of interest.