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15+ Must have Web Resources for Designers

Nitin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:39:02 +0000

In last few weeks, while revising and organizing all my resource files and references i realized how helpful they have been to develop myself as a functional designer. Here is a compilation of some useful documents and resources which i think every designer should refer.

Design Readings

Vignelli’s Canon
A 96 page great book published by Massimo Vignelli. He shares his methodology & experiences with type, grid & design thinking. And the great thing is that he has released it for free online. A must read for every designer and in fact, i will suggest also take print and keep a hard-copy for yourself.

Grids Are Good !
Grids are Good ! Ya ! And so this PDF is.A nice document by Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton explaining step by step Grid Construction for a web.

Better Typography – Mark Boulton
A detailed 129 slides for better typography. Also talks about Gray Box modeling and web grids.

Web Typography – Jeff Croft
Another typography document. Jeff Croft covers type basics to CSS styling.

Web Application Form Design
By Luke Wroblewski, practical explanation and guidelines for designing web forms. Really helpful to understand the way user interacts and performs tasks with forms.

Why Design ?
AIGA has been alaways providing respectful resources for design students and proffesionals. This booklet outlines the design business strategy and the process to approach a project.

Advice for Emerging Designers : After School Special
12 useful advices for students and also who are in state of developing a new design business.

Introduction to Good Usability
Visual impact is necessary but a good usability approach is what makes a website or application functional to the end-user. Introduction to good usability by Peter Pixel works well as a handy e-book for basic usability guidelines.

Getting Real by 37 Signals
A book with 16 chapters, 91 essays explaining practical approach to web-app development. And best of all its free to read online !

Corporate Identity Process
Detailed document by Identityworks.com for designing better corporate identities and brands.

Wireframes for the Wicked
37 slides by Nick Finck. Nice documentation about wire-framing and patterns involved.

Tutorials & Resources

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/
http://tutsplus.com/

Tools

Boks
Boks is an AIR application (so it works on Windows, Mac and Linux) that provides a User Interface for Blueprint CSS’s framework. It handles grid configuration, baseline rhythm pimpin’, CSS (with or without compression) and grid.png export, HTML layout and much more goodie-goodie!

Adobe Kuler
Must have for graphic artists. The Adobe AIR based desktop client allows you to search and create color schemes and later import directly to your Adobe applications.

COLOR lovers Desktop App
Desktop Color Search by Colorlovers.com, its an Adobe AIR app that runs on your desktop and allows you to search the entire COLOURlovers database for colors, palettes and patterns.

Pencil Project
Pencil is a small add-on that turns your Firefox 3 browser into a sketching tool with just a 400-kilobyte installation package. Useful for creating quick mockups and wireframes.

Have more links ? Do Drop them as comment.

Type & Grid – Wallpaper

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(ITF) Indian Type Foundry

Nitin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:53:27 +0000

Yesterday, 4th Sep. ITF-Indian Type Foundry, an initiative by Peter Biľak of Typotheque and SN Rajpurohit and Rajesh Kejriwal (Kyoorius Exchange) was launched as first specialised company to develop and directly distribute digital fonts in India.

Fedra Hindi is released as the first typeface from ITF.

Extract from Yesterday’s Press Release :

From this mornings’ press release:

“The Indian Type Foundry (ITF) is the first company to develop and directly distribute digital fonts in India. ITF was initiated by Peter Biľak of Typotheque in partnership with SN Rajpurohit and Rajesh Kejriwal (Kyoorius Exchange). “Rajesh has been incredibly active in bringing the Indian design community together. He has created the first Indian design magazine and first Indian design conference, and been a catalyst behind many collaborative projects in India”, says Peter Biľak. “That’s why I was very pleased that Rajesh agreed to join us to create ITF. And I have worked with the very talented Satya Rajpurohit for the past two years on Fedra Hindi, our first typeface specifically designed for the Indian market.”

Existence of such specialised company will now help the designers do better job for regional services and will also motivate the young designers and students to work upon Indian Typeface Design projects.

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Super Mario – The 8-bit awesomeness !

Nitin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:34:23 +0000

I don’t need to say anything about the legendary label. As a kid, it was the first experience of such great interaction with sight,sound & motion. I still remember all the level maps, characters and not to mention, the music.

Yesterday, i just created this Fan art wallpaper for Super Mario. Tried to make the final art a mix of vector + pixel-art. Its available in 1920 x 1200 wide-screen as well as regular version.

DOWNLOAD

A little more about Mario.

Super Mario Bros. is a platform video game was developed and published by Nintendo in late 1985. In Super Mario Bros., the main character-Mario, saves Princess Toadstool ‘Peach’ of the Mushroom Kingdom from King Koopa ‘Bowser’. Mario’s younger brother, Luigi-is the second player in multi-player mode, and plays on the same plot role as Mario.

To save Princess, Mario travels through the eight worlds and three sub-worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom by going to the castle in each to defeat a minion of King Koopa. Inside the eighth castle, Mario frees the Princess Peach after a final fight with King Koopa !

Apart from the amount of detailing in graphics & gameplay or arcade level, the music of the game played a major role to struck the user’s head. It was composed by Kōji Kondō, a Japanese musician who has created compositions for various Nintendo Games including Duck Hunt, Wrecking Crew, Mario Bros. and Kung-Fu !

I couldn’t found the original soundtrack but in the video below, a guy from Soth Korea called Zack Kim plays Mario theme on his Guitar. Worth a Watch !

Meet the Elements Video ! An infographic periodic table.

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Electro Lounge wallpaper !

Nitin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:18:53 +0000

Recently i have been listening to some really good electronic music bands like Royksopp, Daft Punk, Mint Royale and El Ten Eleven. Their music works out great to help while long working session with your machine.

This wallpaper artwork came out as a result of too much listening to them.
Click to Download it if you like, its available in all common resolutions as a zip bundle.

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Miniature Toy Cars shoot.

Nitin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:38:47 +0000

A small shoot of some of my old toy cars, i wish i get some time and a good story to do some stop-motion using them in this style .
For now, i have uploaded a 10 image package avilable for download.

Download them, add your own components, have fun !

But, please dont use them for commercial purpose. And i would be pleased if u leave credit note or a link.
LINK TO DOWNLOAD

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