Join Code Academy

http://www.codecademy.com

Join Code Academy to refine your coding skills. It offers lessons and walks you through the step of learning code from scratch.

-Jesse

CSS Hat

http://csshat.com/

CSS hat is amazing. It takes your .PSD files and spit out the CSS code for it. One more thing to make designer's lives easier.

-Jesse

Piffle

Hate code? Subscribe to the Piffle mailing list so you can get the demo for their no code required website building.

-Jesse

25 Free Graphic Design Programs

Adobe Creative Suite is great but let's keep in mind there are some great free alternatives for those who may not have the budget for it or who disagree with a program (looking at you DreamWeaver).

Here are 25 great design programs that are not only great software but of course - free.

30 Tutorials To Make Your Life Easier

Vector art can be really beautiful but also kind of tricky, here are 30 great tutorials for effects that otherwise may have seemed quite difficult.

I was able to use the Sunburst one for a personal project.

Vector Tutorials

Don't hate, Validate.

http://validator.w3.org/

When developing a website, coding can be an unforgiving game. With Validator, it sifts through your code and tells you where the stick is in your spokes. Use it and live slightly less stressed.

-Jesse

Free Portfolio Site

For those of you who don't already know about Cargo it is a fantastic portfolio website because it is doesn't look like a portfolio website, it looks like a professional website.

It displays your work in a very simple and intuitive fashion.

It is request only, but they are happy to support student designers with their service so just send them an e-mail.

http://cargocollective.com/

Canadian Design & History

James Draplin and the Draplin Design Company put together this incredible poster with everything they love about Canada. There is some incredible design reference here and alot of history. Worth a look.

Full-Size Version

- JP

FREE Virtual lighting studio

This is fantastic for photographers–Olivier Prat of France-based Zvork Visual Programming has developed a free online studio lighting simulator, called Virtual Lighting Studio, to test lighting setups. 

A virtual lighting studio–what will they think of next!

-Sarah

http://www.zvork.fr/vls/

FREE Opportunities

This site offers:

-free access to tutorials, which you don't have to sign up for! They are easy to follow, and very interesting. My personal favorite is the Light Painting Guide by Christopher Hibbert.

-FREE wallpaper designs for your laptop or desktop–all creative & inspiring to gaze at when you're working on your computer all day.

-Interviews with designers–comments, tips etc. all intriguing and easy listening.

-Inspiration–A mandatory element to help designers keep fresh and creative.

-Opportunities to submit work and have it featured.

Overall, this website is nothing but good news, inspirations, freebies and opportunities to get noticed by other professionals. What more could you want!

-Sarah

http://abduzeedo.com/tags/wallpaper

Online Portfolio

Check out Behance to start your own online Portfolio. It's not only an online portfolio but a social network to meet other designers and industry professionals.

-Jesse

The Host with the Most

http://www.freehostia.com/free-chocolate.html

Get free hosting at Freehostia.com with the Chocolate package. All you need is to have the domain name locked down and you're in business.

-Jesse

FREE AFTER EFFECTS TEMPLATES!

Today is an Adobe After Effects day! Luckily, I've stumbled upon FREE After Effect  Project templates to download on either your Mac or Win. These templates should help you if anyone is looking to create a unique or grungy title sequence, music album intro, corporate or casual presentation and much much more! A big thanks to Adobe.com for providing them. Simply click the link below and have some fun and impress everyone. 
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?l=3&s=5&o=desc&exc=21&cat=235&event=productHome



-Blair

144 FREE AFTER EFFECTS PLUG-INS

The title says it all! Anyone into or aspiring to learn Adobe After Effects and show off your amazing motion graphics skills? Well we've got something to help you out, 144 Free plug-ins—which will no doubt enhance and make your project all the better. A big thank you to filmmaker.com for providing these. Simply follow the link below and get cracking.
http://filmmakeriq.com/2008/12/aftereffects-plug-in-round-up/




-Blair

Free Web-Editing Program!

I can't be the only one here who hates Dreamweaver.

KomodoEdit is a free open source editor and in my opinion is worlds better than Dreamweaver. Not only does it auto-complete lines of code for you, but being able to have the browser window within the program right above the code is just fantastic.

On top of all that - it is hands down the best looking application icon I have on my computer.

Try it out! It is free...
http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit

Q is for Quality

It's hard to make an exciting and unique design when all you have to work with are the brushes that come with your computer. Fix this with Qbrushes, a free Photoshop brush site. The site is easy to use, and has a high quality selection. You can get everything from grunge brushes to water colour effects. Each brush package has a nice cover image showing what you can do with that set of brushes and if you click on it, it shows you all the brushes you get in that package. It's fast and easy.

http://qbrushes.net/

FREE Background Patterns and Textures for Web Designers

Hello everyone, have I got a treat for any web designers, or anyone who wants to start doing web design. 

Check out Speckyboy Design Magazine or follow this link:http://speckyboy.com/2008/01/19/top-10-free-resources-for-background-patterns-and-textures-for-web-designers/ for the top 10 free resources for background patterns and textures.

Definitely worth a look at! 

-Blair

FREE HEAVY/GRUNGE BRUSHES

Here at Free Tools of Design, we love Photoshop and brushes. Here I've provided a link for super cool free heavy/grunge brushes from WebToolHub.com that anyone can use to create really cool grunge, David Carson-esque backgrounds or whatever your creative heart desires. Just click the link then download. 

http://graphics.webtoolhub.com/grp-a224-shad0ws-brush-set-2.aspx

Compatible PS7 and CS.


-Blair

Helvetic vs Arial

http://www.mimeartist.com/helvetica/

Get some designer anger out as the role of Helvetica beating down Arial in this flash game.
http://www.mimeartist.com/helvetica/

Also here is a way to train the eye to tell the difference.
http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus-helvetica/

-Jesse

FREE Neuro Web Design

What is Neuro web design?

It's a technique that explores how human behavior and motivation have a role in the design of websites.  These concepts are even more important in the age of usability and user experience – where a site must cater to a specific audience in order to increase sales – otherwise your customer is bound to find another site that meets their demands. 

Here you'll find tips & techniques that are very useful & will benefit you directly. Read it!

http://www.onextrapixel.com/2012/04/02/neuro-web-design-tips-and-techniques/

-Sarah

1001 Free Fonts

This is another great site for finding the perfect font for your project without breaking the bank. 1001 fonts is true to its name as it has tons of fonts to choose from. Just remember what I keep saying over and over again, use discretion when choosing a font. There are plenty of cheesy, over the top or just downright tacky fonts that you will have to sort through to get at the good stuff. But that's our job as designers, to find what works for a specific project and apply it to maximum effect. Overall I would say the quality of the fonts available on 1001 free fonts is good and the navigation is easy to use. The site allows you to test preview fonts before downloading which is a nice touch. A lot of the font categories and even a few of the fonts can also be found at dafont.com (mentioned previously on this blog) but there is enough new content to justify visiting this site.

http://www.1001freefonts.com/famous-fonts.php

Beautiful Hand-Drawn Chalk Serif Typography With Incredible Detail

This blew me away. A picture is worth a thousand words sometimes.

http://stancedesign.tumblr.com/post/20450033687/f-featherbrain-liz-collini-via-typetoken

- JP

How To Write An E-mail & Actually Get A Response

http://artofmanliness.com/2012/03/01/how-to-write-an-email-that-will-actually-get-a-response/

A great article with tips on how to write an e-mail to someone, and actually recieve a response. A fantastic read covering things which may seem obvious but we don't realise how often we overlook.