Always useful, here is a list of great sites to find free fonts:

Mycroburst.com is a new website I just read about. It allows designers to browse various design challenges, submit their work, and potentially win a “prize”. Right now they are only accepting designer’s registrations, but hopefully they will soon open the contest postings so I can check them out. Might be a good way to practice designing things like logos, business cards, posters, etc. and I might even win some cash which wouldn’t hurt either! I think it would also be interesting to see how other designers solve the challenge – wonder if you will be able to view all of the entries or not…

Great ways to find images!

Flickr Search Engines:

FlickrStorm

LiteFlick

Flickriver

18 Free Stock Photo Sites:

1. Public-domain-photos.com
2. ImageBase
3. FreePhotosBank.com
4. FreeJPG
5. Cepolina Photos
6. Studio25
7. Visipix
8. Burning Well
9. tOfz
10. stock.diwiesign.com
11. UnProfound
12. Abstract Influence
13. FreeFoto
14. unices.org
15. Amygdela’s atmosphere
16. ZURBphotos
17. star29
18. Photogen

(originally posted by Matt Keeler on Lunarpages)

I really like this website for its free grunge style fonts.Very unique and they also have some cool script style grunge fonts too.

This company is so inspiring to me. It is a husband/wife design team that started in 2000. Veerle Pieters was named one of the 30 Most Influential People in Web Design by webdesigndev.com. I love everything about them from their name to the logo to the website to the projects they’ve done. Their branding is so strong it is incredible – Love It!

I saw this new website posted on a blog and it is a pretty cool idea. It is a feedback site for designers (mostly graphic and web design related). You simply create a profile, post your design, and then people comment on it and give you suggestions. As they mentioned on the blog I saw it on, it seems that “real design people” are actually the people using the site which is nice. I thought it would mostly be people totally ripping other people’s designs to shreds, but for the most part, the comments are very mild but helpful. Even if you don’t want to put your own designs out there for criticism, it is neat to see what people like and don’t like on any random design concept.

The combination of exploring freelance graphic design and being incredibly slow and bored at work has caused me to want to learn Adobe Illustrator. I found this tutorial blog written by Tony Soh, creator of www.vectordiary.com called Learn Illustrator CS3 in 30 Days. It consists of several exercise that teach you the ins and outs of all of the basic tools and elements of Illustrator. The final challenge is creating a logo which puts most of the skills you learned to the test. I found it to  be exactly what I needed to familiarize myself with the program and it was much faster than trying to just play around with it myself. One of the most helpful tutorials was actually a link to extra help that he had in the Pen Tool tutorial. At the bottom of this blog, there is a link to download the Pen Tool Exercise. You open the file in Illustrator and it shows you exactly where to click and drag to trace the outline of the word VECTOR. After doing it once with the “follow the dots”, I turned the direction layer off and traced it myself. I found this to be so helpful in understanding how to make curved lines. All in all, if you are trying to learn Illustrator, I highly recommend starting here.

My sister first introduced me to LaVanila products at Sephora while shopping one day. It is a line consisting mostly of body products (they also have candles), that are all “100% Healthy” and smell absolutely amazing! Everyone that catches a whif of these scents loves them. There are 5 scents, Pure Vanilla (which is my favorite), Vanilla Grapefruit, Vanilla Coconut, Vanilla Blossom, and Vanilla Lavender. These also make a great gift because like I said, everyone thinks they smell great. And on top of that, they have amazing package design – so elegantly modern – and you can also feel good because they are “all-natural” products (read more about their healthy practices here). So run to Sephora and pick some up for you and a friend!

Dan sent this awesome display of package design (found from TheDieline blog). It was designed by Moscow based designer Arthur Schreiber. I love everything about it from the embossed pattern on the box to the nod to a sword slice incorporated both on the box and in the design of the bottle – so smart. This would definitely catch my eye at the liquor store.

I recently came across a blog that had some great logo tutorials as well as a list of 8 sites to get some logo inspiration. I wanted to re-post them so I could refer to them down the line. Here they are – Click on logo to go to website:

Lastly, I just had to include this site which Dan brought to my attention. It is dedicated to posting bad logos, so if you want to know what NOT to do, or if you just want a good laugh, check it out!