Website graphics resources
Contents
Patterns, photos, gradients, brushes, and more
There are many generous people out on the internet who like to show off their work and allow other people to build on things they've produced. It is important to carefully read the terms of use that are provided with any person's work. Many people are glad to have you use their source material provide it isn't for commercial work. Some really want attribution on your website if you use their source material. No-one wants you to take their work and say it's yours, or resell it as is for profit, but there are many generous folks who will let you use their work even in commerical ventures. If you have any question about how you're using tools from the internet, contact the owner and ask them how they feel about. Below are some of my favorite sites for finding interesting and helpful tools for producing web graphics.
Brushes, textures, patterns, & fonts
If you've never played with brushes in Photoshop, Painter, or the Gimp you're in for a treat. Brushes can add texture or graphical elements at any size and can take a plain uninteresting web site that next step into eye-catching.
- http://fbrushes.com - A large source of brushes, textures and patterns collected from a variety of sources.
- http://webtreats.mysitemyway.com - Textures, brushes, icons, and many other resources. Free items available for commercial as well as personal use. Other items for sale.
- http://www.obsidiandawn.com/ - Excellent and original brushes and tutorials on graphic design. Her work is available for free for personal use (with attribution), and there is a small fee for commercial use.
- http://subtlepatterns.com/ - A nice collection of elegant textures that make you sight look sophisticated without dominating the design.
Advice on building a site
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com - Advice on design, CSS, Photoshop & Dreamweaver tutorials, and lots more.
- http://webdevelopersjournal.com - Javascript, Ecommerce, Web tools, this is a great ezine for all levels of web developers.
- http://www.photoshopsupport.com/ - Tutorials and links to stock photography.
Clipart
- http://www.clker.com/ - A huge collection of royalty free clipart.
Font Information
This is an example of font families available in most browsers.
Check out Google Fonts for a whole new way of looking at font handling.
Stock Photography
- http://pixabay.com/ - A great place to find beautiful, unencumbered photography. You can freely use any image from this website in digital and printed format, for personal and commercial use, without attribution requirement to the original author.
- http://pdphoto.org - A collection of interesting and useful photography from Jon Sullivan. Almost all work is in the public domain, free for commercial or personal use, but check any photos you choose. There are a few with non-commercial requirements.
- http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ - Another excellent source of public domain work. Please note that no release forms were signed by models in the pictures.
- http://www.freestockphotos.biz/ - Lots of graphics as well as photography.
- http://www.public-domain-image.com/ - Another interesting PD site for photography.
- http://newmexico.org/photos/ - New Mexico photography for use in promoting tourism in New Mexico.
Inspiration
One of the most interesting places on the Internet for emerging art trends is http://www.deviantart.com/, an online community of artists.
Another fun place to see the power of CSS is The CSS Zen Garden
Other Free Assets & Tools
I just ran across this. It seems like a social media graphics/fonts/templates sharing site: http://www.creattor.com/
The Colorpicker website is great for finding that perfect color and getting it's RGB.
The CSS generator can help you build buttons and gradients out of CSS3.
