We have come together as a studio to create an ultimate list of our favourite tools, resources, inspiration and information for designers that will make your life easier, and help you to get out of your creative bubble to find inspiration!
Documentaries
Abstract: the Art of Design - Particularly the Paula Scher and Jonathan Hoefler episodes
Podcasts
Online Inspiration
Previous submissions/winners of design related awards are also a great source of inspiration...
Offline Inspiration
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Museums & Galleries – Ulster Museum, the MAC, National Print Museum Dublin
Belfast School of Art Annual Graduate Showcase
Design tools
FigJam - Great for mood boarding and collaborative research
coolors.co - Colour palette generator/randomiser
colorhunt.co - Colour palette inspiration
GoFullPage - Screenshot an entire web page with one click
colourcontrast.cc - Check how well colours contrast according to WCAG standards
Colour Vision Deficiency PDF Viewer - Check how your design will appear to people with different forms of colour blindless
WhatFont - Pulls the font used from the source code of a website
HEX Colour Picker - Pulls the HEX code from the source code of a website
Design resources
Laws of UX - A brilliant resource focusing on the whys of designing for the user experience
bookmarks.design - A huge collection of useful design resources
brandsite.design - Collection of big brand guidelines
shortcuts.design - List of useful shortcuts for the most popular design programmes
briefbox.me - Regularly updated creative briefs
OneMinuteBriefs - Another brief source, with a focus on quick thinking/execution
Design for Good resources
Design Declares & Design Declares IE
Mockups
Free stock
Pexels - Free stock photos
Unsplash - Free stock photos
New Old Stock - Vintage photos from the public archives
Pond5 - Free stock video
uppbeat.io - Free stock sound/music
Free illustrations
Free icons
Free font resources
Adobe Fonts - Not free but included in a CC subscription
Design games
KERNTYPE - a letter kerning game
The Bezier Game - practice your pen tool skills
I Shot the Serif - but I did not shoot the sans serif...
pixact.ly - Try to create shapes of the correct dimensions by eye
Shape Type - a letter shaping game
Can't Unsee - a this-or-that on UI design errors
If you have any tools or resources to add to our list, let us know - we’re all ears for fresh creative inspiration and things that help make a designer's life easier!
