My Favourite Design Resources // Top Ten Tuesday #16

First of all quick note about my mini absence: on Friday night I was at a paranormal investigation and somehow fell down steps. I’m not even sure how it happened. One minute I was on the steps and the next I was on the ground, haha. I hurt my ankle pretty badly. I didn’t go the hospital because I’m a baby so I bought an ankle strap and have been taking ibuprofen. I’ve only just been able to start walking on it properly. I’ve spent the past 3 days in bed because my foot needed to be elevated or it would ache like crazy. So annoying!! I’m pretty sure I’m back properly now though. Sorry for any of your posts that I’ve missed!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

This Week’s Theme: Top Ten Tuesday REWIND** – go back and do a topic you missed over the years or recently or a topic you really want to revisit.

Obviously, I’m cheating and creating my own theme because 💁🏻

My theme: My Favourite Design Resources (spoiler alert: there’s more than 10)

**Honestly when I read this theme all I could think of was the “rewind” part in “Satisfied”. I keep singing “I REMEMBER THAT NIGHT I JUST MIGHT!!!!! REWIND!!!!”. Anyway.

COOLORS.CO – A website that generates a random colour scheme when you press the spacebar. You can also chose a base colour and create a colour scheme for that. I’m someone who loves to make sure my designs all have complimentary colours so this website helps A LOT! Plus the random schemes can help inspire me to use colours that I don’t normally go for.

COLOR PALETTE FX – This allows you to upload an image and then gives you a colour palette with colours from the image. I know customisation is poor on free accounts, but if you have a paid one this can be really helpful in making sure your header image doesn’t clash with other colours on your blog/site.

TINEYE LABS – You can search for images based on a certain colour(s) [up to five]. All the images are generated from Flickr and are Creative Commons which means you’re free to use them (most require credit to the original owner, which is just something polite to do anyway!).

DAFONT – I’m sure most people know about this site, but it’s a staple for a reason. There are thousands of free fonts on here with different categories that you can search for certain styles. I remember using this site back when I was in school and it’s awesome to see that it’s still going strong.

BEHANCE – This a design site with a huge range of projects and resources so I definitely recommend exploring it! It’s great to look at for inspiration. I mostly use it for fonts though. Whilst you have to pay for some of them there’s also a huge range of free ones available. Whilst DaFont is great Behance has some really unique and high quality fonts. To make it easy the link takes you to all the free fonts!

FONT FABRIC – Another site with some great unique and high quality fonts! There’s free and paid options available. The link goes to the fonts that are free.

(I recently learnt that apparently some people frown upon the use of stock photos in the blogging world? This is kind of ridiculous to me. Yes, we should all try to be creative and learn new skills but it’s not possible for us all to be amazing photographers. My bookstagram is proof enough of that 😂. Stock photos exist FOR A REASON.)

GRATISOGRAPHY – Free high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and commercial projects. New photos are added weekly.

MAGDELEINE – Hand picked free photos. Some are copyright free, but some require credit back so make sure to check!

SUPERFAMOUS – Superfamous images are available under the conditions that you can use the work for your own purposes as long as credit is provided.

UNSPLASH – All photos published on Unsplash are available to use without having to give credit.

CANVA – Whilst I prefer to use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Canva is a great free resource if you want to start learning design. The only reason I feel more comfortable with Adobe is because I’ve been using it for over 7 years and it’s what I used during my Digital Media course. It still confuses me though so don’t feel like you have to know how to use it.

GIMP – This is another free alternative to Photoshop. Unlike Canva, which is online based, it’s a program that you download and install to your computer. Again, GIMP confuses me but I know a lot of people use it and swear by it. Whilst it’s not as advanced as Photoshop you can do more on it than you can on Canva.

FREEPIK – A site that has free vector art, illustrations, icons, PSD and photos. Most resources on Freepik require you to credit back.

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I hope you all enjoyed my take on this week’s TTT! There’s a ton of resources that I didn’t include in this post so there’ll probably be a part 2!

Feel free to leave me a link to your own TTT so I can drop by!

I hope you’re all having a fantastic day xx

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway!