Being a beginner in design can be daunting without solid resources, and finding those resources on your own takes time—time you could be using actually create some work of your own. Luckily a few of us here at designExplorr have some of our own personal resources to share with you! Hopefully, they’ll help you as much as they’ve helped us in our own creative work.
Our first resource is from our very own founder, Jacinda Walker. She recommends the go full page extension on google chrome (and other google extension supporting browsers). It’s free and allows you to take a screenshot of an entire webpage as is. You can download the screenshot as an image or a pdf file with just one click!
Next is from Tyanna Reeves, former designer intern. Her recommended resource was music—and she likes to curate playlists for certain moods to help her brainstorm new designs. The most popular music streaming platforms are Apple Music, Spotify (which has a free account), and Tidal (which also has a free account tier)—they all have the playlist function so try it out and see if that works for you!
Another designer intern, Sabrina Simpson’s resource is Pinterest. She likes to create and organize boards when she starts a new project. Pinterest boards are a great way to visualize concepts and color palettes before properly planning and working through a design! However, you will have to create an account to unlock the board feature.
Alissha Wilson, yet another designer on the team, recommended the color index. It contains over 1,100 color combinations and CMYK and RGB formulas for both print and web media. Alissha uses it for color matching and its genre-specific categories. She also recommends Satori Graphics on YouTube—he posts graphic design content ranging from tutorials in Adobe Illustrator, graphic design theory, brand identity, and more.
And lastly, our content writing intern, Tahlia Gaulding’s, resources are a thesaurus, because using the same word in a paragraph can be grating—and Quillbot, a paraphrasing website that allows you to take text and transform it for better fluency. She says it helps her when she’s stuck on a paragraph that just isn’t reading right.
That’s it for designExplorr’s top resources from the team themselves! Try out some of these resources for yourself and see if they’ll be any help in your creative process—regardless if you’re an advanced professional or a novice creative.
Let us know what your favorite creative resource is in the comments below!
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