Design Resources

Design Resources

Color

  • Kuler by Adobe is designed to allow folks to build and share robust color schemes within the Adobe suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.)
  • Color Scheme Designer 4 (aka Paletton) allows you to build a palette based on color interaction, while allowing for color variants.
  • Colourlovers has a dynamic color scheme creation software as well as an active community of creative folks who love to discuss color.
  • Color Hunter will pull an entire palette from any uploaded image, which is especially useful if you find a single image that nails your brand.
  • Colors On The Web  creates a color palette specifically for online use.
  • Colorotate uses a 3D render to help you see the interaction of hues and shades.

Font Sites

Graphic Design services

All offer flat-rate logo, website, and branding packages with varying degrees of flexibility and responsiveness:

Freelance Sites

All of these sites allow you to outsource and crowdsource jobs to freelancers at a range of abilities and prices. Your mileage will vary. Naturally, for best results you want to go in with your eyes open to red flags and a specific measure of success. These range from design specific freelancers to folks who will write your name in the sand in Turkey and tweet the photo. Know what you want and do your homework. Remember: Cheap is expensive.

Online Printers:

  • Gotprint.com : high quality, low cost, wide variety of items and customized options. Allow time for shipping.
  • PSPrint : Random sales can make them competitive against other vendors.
  • Vistaprint cranks out fast, slick products in low volumes. The quality is good, and with their inevitable sales you can save money… but there are much better options in terms of cost, variety, and quality. n.b. their generic swag options have become so ubiquitous in genre fiction they verge on invisibility.
  • Uprinting : Several uncommon products offered and especially good prices for stickers.

Software:

  • Adobe Illustrator: high-end, high-expertise, high-cost layout software for creating vector based layouts (e.g. logos and layouts). Illustrator is an industry standard. Its native file type and its nickname are both A.I.  
  • Adobe Photoshop : high-end, high-expertise, high-cost software for creating raster-based images (e.g. paintings and drawings). Its native file type is PSD.
  • GIMP: a free, open-source package that mimics Photoshop's functions and versatility at image creation for Mac, WIndows, and Linux. It offers a range of tools including painting, colour correction, cloning, selection, and enhancement.
  • Irfanview: free, simple image editing software for PCs suitable for cropping, resizing, reformatting, and other simple tasks.
  • Seashore: a free, open-source package for Mac builts around GIMP's graphic engine.
  • SumoPaint: A lightweight web-based image editing that offers a few snappy options.

Stock Photos

When it comes to producing covers, artwork, and swag, stock image sites are your friend but you have to shop around so you don't reuse the same image 50 other folks in your genre have already.

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