Design Resources

Design Resources

There are several good design resource websites to be found throughout the Internet; websites for stock images, design tutorials, articles and more. In this post I’ve included some of the best ones I’ve found so far. Whether its for business use or personal, I hope some of it can be of use to you.

Stock Photography and Images

stock.xchng
stock.xchng is an excellent website providing thousands of royalty-free photos, designs and other graphics covering almost every subject. The website also offers several other services, such as paid-for access to professional grade stock images, tutorials and much more.

iStockphoto
Another good stock photography website, iStockphoto provides a range of paid-for images. Although they don’t offer a free service, what they do provide is high quality.

Tutorials and Guides

NETTUTS
NETTUTS offer a wide range of Web Development and Design tutorials for any experience level.

PSDTUTS
PSDTUTS similar to NETTUTS, provide tutorials for many different Photoshop techniques and projects.

Other Resources

Logo Design Love
Logo Design Love is resource for various logos and branding covering almost any business model.

Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine is a comprehensive resource for all kinds of Web Development and Design articles.

CSS 3

Cascading Style Sheets

CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, are by far the simplest and most popular way to define the stylistic elements of modern websites, and rightly so; CSS allows you to separate the design elements from the structural elements inherent to the web document by placing the design elements in an independent CSS file - making creating and maintaining a complex and standards-compliant website that much easier.

The CSS used throughout the Internet is currently in its second version but there are now plans for a third; CSS3 aims to go beyond its previous version by including a whole host of new features and techniques which will revolutionise the ways in which content can be presented asthetically. Some of the new features currently under development include the ability to change the opacity of colours displayed on the web page, the possibility of adding shadows to text purely with CSS and without using graphics software such as Adobe Photoshop and much more.

The new CSS is also being developed in individual modules, breaking up the workload involved into manageable and precise chunks; more information on the module system can be found at the W3C’s Introduction to CSS3 (Why Modules?).

CSS3 is expected to offer a whole host of exciting new possibilities for web designers and anyone interested in keeping their website current. For anyone else eagerly awaiting information on new developments in the CSS3 project, please take a look at the links provided at the end of this post.

For further reading on the subject or a more comprehensive list of proposed features and information for CSS3 can be found here:

CSS3 . Info - All you ever needed to know about CSS3

W3C - Introduction to CSS3

Tags: Around the Web, CSS, CSS3, W3C, Web Design, Web Development

Hi there!

Welcome to the Arcane Graphics Design Blog! This is a new development for Arcane Graphics, which I hope will give some insight into many different design and industry news topics from around the Web, as well as shedding some light on any current projects I have going on here which might be interesting to mention.

I’ll be updating the blog with new posts and content as regularly as possible, so please check back often for some interesting stuff!

- Ben

Tags: Announcements, Blog Information, Information, Updates, Web Design