An Evolving Form

That significant difference is the integration of social media. No longer is there only a simple contact number and address. You can give clients, potential clients, and others tons of options to communicate directly with you. You can include your business web address and direct them to more information or a professional portfolio, you can direct them to your social media profiles such as Facebook and Twitter, or you can include a QR code that when scanned takes them directly to the sites you want them to see. My writing portfolio – which I posted on a personal website – always receives views after I hand out my card.

Photo credit: pixage via photopin cc

More important than what is on the card is the presentation of the card itself. Though the idea of business card remains relevant, old-fashioned rectangles of white cardboard do not. What does remain relevant however is creativity and originality. You want something that defines you or your business as soon as you offer it to someone. You want to make an impression before the words on the card are ever read.

Do You Really Need a Business Card?

Well, if you’re anything like me, it’s a very important question to ask. When I was younger and fresh into one of my first jobs after getting my undergraduate degree, I decided I wanted a business card. I went with a trendy, transparent plastic look. The text featuring everything you’d expect was printed in a silvery foil. I designed the card to look like something out of a sci-fi movie and guess what? I succeeded and for the 50 I ordered, the process only required an entire paycheck (and a half). Although they were expensive it was one of these cards that helped me land a better job a few months later!

Photo credit: maddiontour via photopin cc

Things to Keep in Mind:

• Don’t spend your money (if your employer isn’t ponying up for cards) until you know they’ll be a worthwhile investment. You don’t want them printed only to be outdated in two months.
• Keep it clean. Don’t overdesign it and create confusion. You want to capture attention and ensure the person you give the card to doesn’t throw it away.
• Point customers in the right direction. Maximize the space and direct them to where their eyes or action will be the most effective, whether it’s a business website or Facebook.
• Be creative. Take what you do and distill it down to that tiny space. Have a surf shop? Make your business cards tiny surfboards. Run a computer repair shop? Print your contact info on a little circuit board. A writer? Make it a miniscule book. And on and on.

Photo credit: martymadrid via photopin cc

This article was provided by Annie Harrington – a small business owner, writer, and amateur photographer. In her free time she enjoys writing about ways other business owners can positively impact their brand image with unique poster printing and car decals.

So without any further babbling, here’s a most heart-warming collection of 12 summer design resources I stumbled upon recently. While checking it out you’ll see that it has pretty much what any person interested in graphic design would like to see: from lovely PS Actions, to vector illustrations and backgrounds to vector elements and many other useful resources.

Enjoy!

Pastelizer PS Actions, by ~AssassinLenna

Vintage Summer on the Beach, by TanyDi

Palm Vector Grunge Summer Illustration, from Designious

Vector Summer Illustration With Palm Trees, from Designious

Vintage Summer PS Action, by *Leafbreeze7

Sunkissed PS Actions, by ~AssassinLena

Summer Vector Illustration, from DownloadFreeVector

Inky’s Design Cocktail, from InkyDeals

Summer Vector Illustration With Sailing Ship, from Vectorious

Creative Vector Summer Illustration With Palm Trees, from Vectorious

Abstract Summer Floral Vector Illustration, from WebDesignHot

Abstract Summer Vector Illustration, from WebDesignHot

In case you aren’t already left speechless by all these beautiful resources, let me know what do you think about it, in the comments section below.

1.Designspiration

This site is especially useful if you’re looking for design inspiration from a big variety of artistic sources; it has categories for architecture, fashion, packaging, and much more.

Although it provides a comprehensive search tool for all kinds of design images, it’s easily customized to work for searches by color alone. All you need to do is choose up to five colors from their full-page palette, and the site will present you with images that contain the same color combination. You can further finesse your results by adding in a category or search term, and then save the images you like.

2.Colrd

This site has just as large of a variety of image categories, but on a very different slant; instead of looking through different types of design, you can view, alter, and appropriate palettes, gradients, patterns and images.

Once you choose a category, you can select a palette or image and view in further depth. From here, you can edit the palette in great detail with a set of sliders, and save your composition to a collection. Or you can view the CSS code snippet to easily drop it into a working design.

3.TinEye

Try using this database if you’re specifically looking for creative commons photography.

At first glance, TinEye seems to basically be an easier way to sift through Flickr’s free imagery. But it’s a lot more sophisticated than that: you can specify the colors and their ratios within photos to get results with exactly the right combinations. This sensitivity makes it the best resource for finding images with very specific color combinations. You can revise these parameters quickly and easily, and identify the hex numbers of all your colors for further use.

4.Shutterstock Spectrum

If you’re planning on using stock photography for your next project, this is the perfect resource for finding exactly the right imagery.

Certainly the easiest way to find stock images, the display on this site is especially appealing, because the images are so large and the interface is both minimal and intuitive. You can combine color searches (via a small slider) with keyword specifications to find the right hues on the right subject matter. You can even filter your search for brighter or darker tones within the same hue.

5.Color Explorer

If you’re looking for inspirational color palettes rather than great imagery, head to this site of comprehensive color resources.

Color Explorer lets you browse through its library of palettes, or you can create your own, either from scratch or from extracting colors from images. (This makes it a great tool for using in synergy with one of the more image-based resources mentioned above.) You can also select colors from its database of all the major color libraries, such as Websafe Colors and Named Web Colors. But its best offering is the Color Matching tool, which is a wonderfully easy way to create multiple related palettes based on different color systems; you can switch between complementary, triadic, and other methods of color theory to find beautiful variations on any color theme.

6.Kuler

For a color palette explorer that is already integrated with your Adobe Creative Suite, use this site. After searching through palettes by name, subject, or hex number, you can save palettes to your account, and easily access them through all of your Adobe programs. Kuler also offers the ability to extract hues from uploaded images, and editing on-site.

What’s great about these sites is that they all have different functions and specialties that can be used independently for a quick search, or together for a powerful synergy of effects. With this list, you’re sure to have the right source for any kind of color inspiration needed on your future work.

This is a guest post contributed by Rob Toledo, who is working alongside Shutterstock and Bigstock stock creating guides to using stock footage and stock photography to increase user engagement and lower bounce rates. He can be reached on Twitter @stentontoledo.

So, guys, here it is. I wish all of you a wonderful and relaxing holiday!

Enjoy.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, by Orlando Arocena

Battle of Puebla, by Jason Custer

Cinco de Mayo, by Sarah Straub

Cinco de Mayo Celebration Sign, by Indigoiris

Cinco de Mayo Vector Illustration, from Vectorious

Cinco de Mayo Vector Illustration with Cactus Plant, from Vectorious

Mexican with Shot of Tequila Cartoon,from Thinkstock

Animated Chili Pepper with Maracas, from Dynamic Graphics

Viva La Mexico, by Michael Henderson

Mexican Maraca Player: Musician in Sombrero and Poncho, by John T Takai

Oh, and you can tell me if you liked my collection in the comments section below. Or you can tell me whatever else you want there.

Personally, without being a fanatic, I can say that most things about politics fascinates me, especially when it goes back decades or centuries ago.

And since we’ve already established the importance of politics in our lives, it’s clear that such huge domain couldn’t possibly pass by the world of graphic design. And not only because politicians need posters and flyers every 4-5 years, but because every major event in our life inspires us. And since you’re all a bunch of creative people here, I’m sure this happened to you too. If not, wait for it.

Hoping that I sort of made myself clear so far, the thing I wanted to share with you guys today is a showcase of 10 of my favorite political graphic designs. Actually, they’re not only designs, there are also some design resources, vector backgrounds and so on. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll like them as much as I do.

Enjoy!

Communism Vector Pack, from Designious

Propaganda, from David Church

Socio-Political graphic concept designs – “Ex” series, from Woodruff

Vector Vintage Emblem, from Vectorious

War Vector Background – Communism Poster, from Vectorious

Obama ‘Hope’ Poster, from PhotoGuides

War Vintage Label Vector Background, from Vectorious

Make Art Not War, from VisualizeUs

Please, don’t tell me that I missed out on some other great ones out there! Or, yeah, you can tell me below.

Almost every designer in this world has a thing for awesome t-shirt designs. And if we don’t make it ourselves, we look for the best ones on the internet, we print the hell out of them and then we wear them everywhere we go.

I personally love wearing t-shirts that show some really good graphic design skills, and I’m sure I’m not the only one here. And that’s why I thought for today that it would be nice to gather some of my favorite t-shirt designs and show them to you guys. And I did.

Here’s a collection of 10 mind-blowing t-shirt designs that will make your remember why you love black & white art, graphic design and this blog.

Enjoy!

From Nelson Gibbs

T-shirt design aspirations

From Kootation

Black and White Vectorcity

From Designious

Roman Helmet

Carrion Bird

Evil Skull With Crown

From VectorGoods

Skull T-Shirt Design

From BodylineTShirts

The Mighty, Mighty England

From Bumbac100

Lion T-Shirt Design

Tea Party Monster

If you think you have some better ideas of t-shirt designs and you wanna rock my world, bring it on in the comments section below!

And you guys have to face the truth as well: you love floral designs. You keep using floral vector packs in many design projects you have, and you just can’t get enough of them.

But even though floral vectors can easily be found all over the internet, most of them aren’t for free. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m sure no one would mind some free stuff from time to time.

So, for all of you freebie lovers out there, I put together today this really cool collection of 10 free floral vector resources every designer should have and use.

Enjoy!

Hand Drawn Floral Vector Graphics

Floral Ornaments Vector Pack

Floral Vector Graphics

Simply Floral Patterns

Vector Floral Swirls

Floral Vintage Illustration

Vector Vintage Frame

Vector Floral Curves

Branch Vector Background – Vintage Floral Frame

Illustration Vector – Floral Background

I know, you’d wish this list would never end.

Well, you can make this happen by letting me know in the comments section below of other amazing free floral vectors out there that I missed.

Inky teamed up with some of his well-known friends from the community and created a free web design bundle packed with 471 premium resources – most of which can be found exclusively on Inky Deals. Meet Inky’s partners in crime that helped put together this great bundle:

Check out what you will find inside the bundle! In the original post, Inky prepared detailed previews of all the products so you can get a better idea of the level of awesomeness involved. Let’s take a look at all the premium products included, and then simply head over to the post about the bundle to check everything out and download!

And if you don’t settle with plain C Vs featured on freelancer job portals it means you’ve already decided to have your own portfolio website. And that’s when the pain begins.

Now, hoping that I didn’t scare you guys enough, I’ve put together this really awesome collection of 12 portfolio websites, to get you inspired, to help some of you create their own portfolios or maybe to redesign the existing ones.

Enjoy!

Francesco Mugnai

Lounge Lizard

Thibaud

yodabaz

Ryan Scherf

Adham Dannaway

Disturb Media

Gareth Dickey

bio-bak

Ion Drimba Filho

Bryan Katzel

Giles Revell

Mind-blowing, right? Feel free to let me know if there are more awesome portfolios out there that I missed and you would’ve liked to see featured here.

Well, to be honest, I don’t exactly know why I’m doing this either. But I do know one thing: that I’m constantly craving for that beautiful spring weather, the blossom trees, the butterflies and warm rays of sunshine. I also like to think that what I do might somehow convince spring to arrive earlier.

And while I’m stuck here waiting for that to happen, I’m pretty convinced that most of you guys are already working on your spring-related design projects, so why not give you a hand?

What follows is a very useful showcase of 12 gorgeous design resources to help you with your graphic design projects or simply to make you think a little bit more about the beautiful season which is about to come. And don’t worry you won’t find everything you need ’cause I got it all covered: vector illustrations, backgrounds, banners, floral ornaments, vector packs any many more.

Enjoy!

Blossom Tree Vector, from TreeVectors

6 Free Vector Leaf Graphics, from Vecteezy

Spring Mega Vector Pack, from Designious

Spring Mega Vector Pack 2, from Designious

Floral Ornaments Set 3, from DesignTNT

Vector Floral Ornaments Set 4, from DesignTNT

Vector Cherry Blossom Tree, from dragonartz

Spring Announcement Vector Graphic, from dryicons

Season Vector-Abstract Tags, from Vectorious

Pattern Vector Art-Abstract Background, from Vectorious

Spring Flower Green Vector Background, from All-free-download

Header Vector – Web Banners, from Vectorious

Yeah, I know they aren’t all free, but they’re pretty cool, right? Now tell me, do you know any other awesome ones out there, free or premium?