Our sister site, ThemeLabs, opened a new affiliates system and is offering a generous and high commissions of 50% over any purchase made by any user referred by you. This kind of sites usually gives low commissions but since our expenses are low we want to share with everyone half of our incomes. It’s free to participate in this affiliates program. Just register and start referring people.

ThemeLabs will be adding several new premium wordpress themes this year. All you need is a PayPal account to receive your money. ThemeLabs pays on 15th of each month doesn’t matter the amount.

There are several companies and individuals on the internet that sells high resolution textures and it’s usual that they cost big money, but when the budget is low we need to start searching for alternatives. Finding free textures isn’t easy, and even with the resolution of today’s cameras the free textures out there are just of very bad quality. But today I want to share a nice resource where you can find high quality textures for free and you’ll be able to download them without any registration.

According to the few file’s info and EXIF information, the textures from the site High Resolution Textures are created using a Canon EOS 400D, a pretty nice digital camera in the prosumer market.

There are many very nice textures to choose from. This is a resource that must have a place in our bookmark.

Icons are one of the most important but disesteemed part of a website and/or an application. You know where to quickly click when you see a graphically descriptive icon in the right place. Sometimes developers opt for just search a term on Google images and then grab/copy an icon. Other developers opt for the expensive solution and hires a graphic designer to create the icons, but what if you can get hundreds of high quality icons for free? That’s exactly what you can get on ICONS etc.

You can get a compressed ZIP file for the icons group you need without any registration. The compressed files has lot of icons in PNG format with transparency, which is perfect for almost any design work.

It is undeniable that one of the most important element in a successful graphic design has something to do with the font type you use to spread the message and sometimes, when you need to find the right fonts you don’t have it on your local system. Here is where AllMyFonts comes to help you. With more than 128,000 free fonts in TTF format, AllMyFonts.com is one of the biggest fonts resource you can find on the net.

AllMyFonts service started few months ago as a personal project to organize those 128,000 fonts, then the site gone online but in a few days our shared hosting service deactivated it due to the high load. The site then has been removed and after few months of code optimization and caching it’s online again on a big server that guarantees an efficient and fluid service.

AllMyFonts bring you an excellent preview system where you can type any text for a given font to see how it looks. Downloads are completely free without registration of any kind. We also offer a search engine to browse all the fonts.

Note two important things. One is that AllMyFonts is on heavy work at this time, we are classifying in categories all those fonts and the other thing is that AllMyFonts is part of our site’s network. Despite these two details, I think that it perfectly fits to have a post here because its free nature and its graphic related service.

We hope that you enjoy and have fun using this big and great resource considering the very big work that we put on the site’s engine code and the hardware resources needed for this site to work properly.

What about a website that offers tons of graphic related resources? ShareCG is one of them, with thousands of resources in categories like tutorials, 3d models, materials, textures, animations, software, plugins, photography, poser stuff among others. All these resources for absolutely free and uploaded by their authors.

You must register to be able to download, but it’s worth the extra time registering if you can put your hands on so many wonderful resources.

free-PSD is a website that offers awesome templates in PSD format for absolutely free with the only condition to put a link back to their site, pretty fair considering the high quality of the templates offered.

No registration required to download any file. The PSD files are of very high quality in a professional grade and they are even sliced so you can save as separated images to build and customize your own variation of any template.

The templates can be found at free-PSD.com and they are well organized in “colors” categories. Just be sure to browse their template archive in the “free pdf templates” menu at the top right sidebar.

Just few examples of what they offer:

The site Shaboopie is the today’s star for offering such great free resource with direct downloads links.

Here is a small preview of these beautiful logos:

Hope you enjoy this resource.

When it comes to free resources is very difficult to find something of high quality, not impossible, but hard to find. FreePSDFiles.net is one of those resources that when found you’ll be visiting over and over again. Why? Because they offer free PSD files that will make you happy. FreePSDFiles.net carries lot of graphics, all of them available for free (no registration required, thank you) and the best of all is that any file is in native PSD Photoshop format.

Categories are, among others, 3D renders, backgrounds, buttons, icons, illustrations, objects, site templates, textures, web elements and many others.

A very clean and friendly web design makes this site a pleasure to browse. Each image includes a short description and vital file info like resolution, file format, file size, item in the set, author and the obvious download button.

Very recommended resource for designers and graphic artists.

Cool Dark Night Tutorial

Learn to use techniques and brushes in Photoshop to create a cool dark night.

Mystical Moonlight Tutorial

Watch this tutorial to learn how to make a moonlit sky background.

Motion Tutorial

This tutorial will teach you how to separate layers in a Photoshop file to create an animation.

Basic DVD Cover

Learn how to create cover art for a DVD (Harry Potter) in Photoshop.

Ice Age Disaster

Use this tutorial when you need to turn an ordinary landscape or cityscape into a snow and ice covered wasteland.

Fairy Dust in Photoshop Tutorial

By watching this video tutorial, you can learn how to add fairy dust to any picture.

Line Art Demonstration

Learn how to turn a photograph into line art by watching this Photoshop demonstration. Although not really a tutorial, this video shows the finer points of drawing lines to create an illustration.

Grunge Effect Tutorial

Using layers of texture, you can change any picture into a fabulous grunge image.

Smoke Tutorial

Learn how to create digital smoke with ease in both Photoshop and Illustrator.

iPhone Tutorial

Ever wanted to make your own iPhone? This video tutorial will show you exactly how to make your own digital iPhone.

Frilly Fonts Tutorial

Watch this tutorial to learn how to make super cool frilly typography.

Satin Tutorial for Photoshop

Watching this tutorial will teach you the simple and fun technique for creating a rumpled satin cloth effect.

Burnt Treasure Map Tutorial

This video tutorial will show you how to create a burnt treasure map effect. Perfect for your pirate needs!

Lava Planet Photoshop Video Tutorial

Whenever you need a lava planet graphic, check out this Photoshop video tutorial. Or simply learn some new advanced Photoshop skills!

Converting a Photoshop Mockup

Learn how to convert a Photoshop mock up to HTML/CSS for your website.

You may want to take the time to watch and even follow along most of these incredible tutorials. After all, graphic design is a continual learning process, and watching the talent of others in motion is one of the best ways to learn.

Petshopbox Studio

Petshopbox Studio is illustration studio based in Bandung, Indonesia. Established in 2001 as comic studio, we were managed to create 13 comic titles for Indonesian market. Based on market demand and industry situation, we decided to broaden our business scope. Now, we’re specialized on creating game assets, character design and icon design. We’re on process of developing our own character and icon design retail.

Illustration Examples

About Justin

Justin Maller is a freelance illustrator and art director based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been creating digital art for over eight years, and has produced professionally in both a private and studio based capacity for the last three. He is represented by Jeremy Wortsman of the Jacky Winter Group.

Justin has had the pleasure of producing illustrations and concept art for a diverse array of companies and publications worldwide, and enjoys a cordial collaborative relationship with several prestigious international design studios. Work aside, he is an inner core member of the Keystone Design Union, an avid sneaker collector, occassional tweeter, and a mild force of nature on the basketball court. Justin is also the Creative Director of The Depthcore Collective, an international modern art collective established in June 2002. This role sees him direct and interact with many of the worlds most talented and prodigious young artists, musicians and designers as they illustrate and orchestrate the thoughts, hope and dreams of all corners of the globe.

Category: Music

Tour Poster

Illustration

Album Artwork for Skye Harbour

Album Artwork for GirlTalk

Press Shot for MC Pez

Press Shot for Bliss N Eso

Album Artwork for X&Hell

Category: Fashion

Crooks and Castles

Illustration for Rich Soil Clothing

Fashion Portraits

Of Ground

The Wait

Illustration and Concept Art

Illustration for Dsevo Exhibition

Category: Personal Projects

All Images are Copyright Justin Maller

After meeting in design school at the Art Institutes, Josh Kenyon and Colby Nichols began their design careers in their hometown of San Diego. As their lives and careers progressed they found themselves in two very separate cities: Josh in Chicago and Colby in Portland. Though it would seem the distance would end their creative alliance, the two found new ways to co-produce, proving they may possibly share the same brain. Jolby combines their talents through Colby’s artistic obsession with creatures and shapes and Josh’s creative love for pattern and texture. In 2009, Josh moved to Portland, OR bringing the two artists together to collaborate in the same city for the first time.

About Justin

Justin Maller is a freelance illustrator and art director based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been creating digital art for over eight years, and has produced professionally in both a private and studio based capacity for the last three. He is represented by Jeremy Wortsman of the Jacky Winter Group.

Download Page

All Images are Copyright Justin Maller

It’s completely free to download, just click here for the

Download Page

1. All in One SEO Pack

This is an all-time favorite WordPress SEO Plug-in for many WordPress lovers. The Plug-in automatically optimizes the WordPress blog for Search Engines. The Plug-in automatically optimizes titles and Meta tags. It avoids duplicate content found on wordpress blogs.

The Plug-in works out of the box, making the task easier for beginners, as they don’t have to even look at the options and can just install and advanced users can fine-tune everything.

Requirements:

WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher

compatible up to: 3.0.2

2. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps generates a special XML sitemap which helps major search engines to better index blogs. The sitemap enables the search engines to see the complete structure of the site and retrieve it more efficiently. This plug-in supports all types of wordpress generated pages and custom URLs. It also notifies major search engines whenever you create a post.

Requirements:
WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.0.2

3. Platinum SEO Pack

Platinum SEO Pack also offers all the functionalities of All-in-one-SEO Pack. The Plug-in optimizes post and page for search engines, generates all SEO relevant Meta Tags automatically. Automatic 301 redirects for any permalink changes, canonical URLs, option to specify Meta description and Meta keywords tag for categories and tag pages are some of the features.
Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 1.5 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.0.2

4. WassUp

This is a fantastic Plug-in to track your visitor statistics and behavior. It can track visitors in real-time. The Plug-in has a readable and fancy admin console to keep track of site visitors and gives a detailed view of user behavior (almost everything users are doing on the site). A useful Plug-in for SEO or Statistics maniacs and importantly, it is not intended show group statistics like visitors per day, page views per month etc, as there are already good tools available for that like Google analytics.  Instead, WassUp provides flexible, easy-to-read views of visitors’ data that is customizable by time periods, visitor types, search keywords, and much more.

Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 2.2 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.0.2

5. WordPress SEO by Yoast

This Plug-in you can say the complete all in one SEO solution for a wordpress blog. Some of the considerable features out of the huge list include Taxonomy title and Meta description support, Google search result snippet previews, post title and Meta description meta box to change these on a per post basis, breadcrumbs support, with configurable breadcrumbs titles etc.

Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.1

6. WP Minify

Wp Minify helps improve page load time by combining and compressing JS and CSS files using Minify engine. The Plug-in grabs JS and CSS files in the generated WordPress page and sends that list to the Minify engine. The Minify engine then delivers a consolidated, minified, and compressed script or style for WP Minify to reference in the WordPress header.

If you even have some idea about SEO you must be aware of the importance of page loading time in SEO point of view and thus can understand the importance of this useful Plug-in.

Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher

compatible up to: 3.0.2

7. SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images is an image optimizer, automatically updates all images with ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes in case the images do not have ALT and TITLE set and the plugin makes the post W3C/XHTML valid as well.

Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher

Compatible up to: 3.0.2

8. SEO Smart Links

SEO Smart Links brings automatic SEO benefits for your site, the plug-in can automatically link keywords and phrases in posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on the blog and it also allows to set up own keywords and set of matching URLs and allows blog owner to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window as well.

Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 2.3 or higher

compatible up to: 2.9.2

9. SEO Ultimate

This Complete SEO plug-in gives you control over title tags, noindex, meta tags, slugs, autolinks, 404 errors, canonical, rich snippets and includes a lot of powerful features.

Requirements:

WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher

compatible up to: 3.0.2

The latest version 4.5 adds bug fixes as well.

10. HeadSpace2 SEO

HeadSpace2 is a complete Meta data manager that allows fine-tuning the SEO potential of the site. It controls almost every aspect of site’s Meta-data including advance tagging, analytics and a few plug-ins.

One can configure meta-tag for posts, pages, categories, homepage, author pages, search pages, 404 pages. This Plug-in has a lot more interesting features.

Requirements:

Requires WordPress Version: 2.3 or higher

Compatible up to: 2.9.2

Views, Suggestions and Constructive comments are welcome; you can also share with us about any other SEO plug-ins that you might find useful.

Free Christmas Fonts

Check out FontSpace for some impressive fonts perfect for Christmas designs.

Free Vector Christmas Icons

These beautifully done free Christmas icons are exactly what you need to decorate your website or desktop.

Christmas Clip Art

Here you will find many links to Christmas clip art, animation, graphics, wallpapers, and more.

Seamless Christmas Patterns

Find over 100 downloadable Photoshop patterns with a Christmas theme on this amazing site.

FreeVectors.net

Need images that can be used on a variety of projects? Find some cool Christmas themed vector graphics, backgrounds, banners, greeting cards, and more. Make sure to check out all 9 pages to see more vectors than you could ever use for this holiday.

36 Holly Jolly Textures

This collection of 100×100 textures for Photoshop will easily add some holiday fun to your designs.

Free Christmas Animations

Any piece from this stunning collection of animations from Seven Oaks Art would be perfect for adding holiday spirit to a website or email newsletter.

Sparkle Christmas Images

Check out these gorgeous Christmas graphics with extra “bling” on Can Stock Photo. There are sparkling Christmas images and cards, all royalty-free and downloadable for a small fee.

Free Social Networking and RSS Feed Icons

Take advantage of one of these 6 free Christmas icon sets for your RSS feed or social networking account. All are high quality and quite stunning.

35 Beautiful Christmas Icon Sets

Find amazing Christmas icon sets on this site. From social networking icons to file folder icons to graphics perfect for adding to your holiday scene for greeting cards.

Free Transparent PNG or Paint Shop Pro tubes

View this collection of generously donated Christmas images for use with Paint Shop Pro or as transparent PNG files.

23 Photoshop Greeting Card Tutorials

Learn how to create Christmas cards using Photoshop with one of these helpful tutorials. Then use your newly learned skills to design your own custom greeting card for the holidays.

15 Christmas WordPress Themes

This nice list of free Christmas themes for WordPress will really get your blog readers in a festive spirit this year.

45 Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials

Find Christmas tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator in this incredible collection. Whether you need to design wallpaper, greeting cards, illustrations, or backgrounds, you can find it here.

Exclusive Free Photoshop Brushes

This thorough list of brushes includes snowflakes, ornaments, frosted snowflakes, Christmas trees, holiday stars, swirls, and fireworks.

Spice up your Christmas designs with some of items in the resources above. Or simply enjoy some holiday design inspiration to get you in a festive mood. Happy Holidays!

About Ray Frenden

Ray Frenden is a self-taught illustrator with a penchant for monsters and the macabre.

Drawing from a childhood weaned on old horror comics, pulp fiction, and sci-fi, my brush and ink work hearkens to an older era. Ray‘s sensibilities for line and footing in current color and design trends helps make his work unique.

All Images Copyright Ray Frenden

Image by Svilen Milev

Is being a freelancer worth it?

When we’re referring to challenges and struggles you may be asking yourself if it’s worth it to keep going. Most of the time the answer is yes. If you have an open mind and are prepared to work hard to get your routines cleaned up, you have the potential to make freelancing work very well for you. If you’re not open to changes and are in this to work as little as possible for a huge income, you’re in the wrong place.

Now let’s have a look at the challenges and how they can be dealt with.

1. Long work hours

Image by Benjamin Earwicker

Dealing with long work hours over time will be challenging to any person, especially if you’re a designer that is expected to come up with new creative results all of the time. After a while most of us will meet the wall and when you get to that point it can be really hard to get back on track. The best way to deal with this is to take charge of the situation before you’re all burned out. Go through your schedules and evaluate what you’ve done recently. Your long work hours are likely to be result of either you taking on too much work or bad efficiency. Once you see which one it is you can start working on that specific problem. Basically you’ll need to take on less work or have a look at how you can become more efficient.

2. Problems meeting deadlines

Image by M Nota

If you often tend to work 24/7 the last days before a deadline or just in general find it hard to get things done in time, you’re in trouble. This will affect how you’re feeling, your time off and the relationship to clients. You’ll need to have a look at why you’re having this problem. The most common reasons are again efficiency or just the fact that you keep setting too optimistic deadlines. Make sure to always set deadlines that are realistic. An extra day or two is always smart to put in there in case anything unexpected comes up. This could be anything from you getting sick, clients wanting additional work done or last minute changes. Always give yourself some extra room in the plans and both you and your clients will be happier.

3. Unstable creativity

Image by Leonardini

If you’ve gone from working 9-5 at any other job, you may struggle a bit when you’re supposed to start working with only your speciality all day long. This can lead you into a period of ups and downs when it comes to creativity. This is completely normal, but there are several things you can do to make this work for you. A whole article could be written on how to boost your creativity, but we’ll look at a few simple things. Make sure you have enough time off, that’s when you recharge your batteries. Read up on articles related to what you do to get new ideas and inspiration. Remember to spend time doing things you love that are not related to work. Look for more variety in the projects you’re accepting. There are many more things you can do, but if you keep an open mind, these tips can be very helpful.

4. Bad efficiency

Image by Piotr Bizior

We’ve already mentioned this as it can be the cause of several challenges. Your efficiency itself can be a challenge. Dealing with it depends on where it fails. Some general tips would be to plan your days in a realistic way, leaving out all personal business, making sure to not check social media and do too much “non-productive” work. The best way to fix your efficiency is simply to log a couple of days and evaluate them. You’ll quickly see where the problems are to be found. Maybe you’re doing too much at once, planning badly or letting other distractions ruin it for you?

5. Marketing your business properly

Image by Sachin Ghodke

Especially when you’re starting up it can be hard to figure out how to get the time and money to market yourself well enough to get enough clients. Many struggle with this and there are freelancers going out of business before they even get started. Planning well ahead is important along with understanding that it takes time. Use the contacts you may have, do as much as possible yourself and put your best work into everything. And when you get your projects, have them become great marketing for you by showing great work and word of mouth can help you in getting forward.

Conclusion

Becoming a power user on Digg gives your profile enormous potential. The ability to hit with almost any post you submit comes naturally. You’ll also build a close network of fellow Internet marketers looking to grow their own submissions. I’ll be going over a few tips to follow for building an influential Digg profile.

Changes since v3

Digg has released many new changes to the site. Most are frowned upon by the userbase for their blatant disregard to the social structure.

The front page of Digg used to be controlled by a select few diggers who understood which content would become popular over time. Once Digg released version 4 it came with the option for media outlets to create profiles. This meant publications such as Mashable and TechCrunch were running their own Digg profiles and knocking out the little guy.

Digg was created to initially share news among the people. It was truly a community of Internet users sharing the most interesting and unique articles from around the web. The major difference here between Reddit or Yahoo! Buzz is how much publicity these articles got. Hitting the front page on Digg usually meant huge spikes in traffic and some extra daily revenue. We are still seeing this on Digg’s front page although numbers have dropped off.

The Digg Algorithm

Digg will promote stories which gain enough diggs over a period of time from a diverse group of users. This algo has always been around and has worked well for quite some time. In v3 diggers would vote on their friends’ submissions and vice-versa. With the release of v4 we’re seeing this as a problem.

The Digg staff removed most functionality from profile pages during the upgrade. Included in this list was the ability to check all your friend’s submissions through Digg. The main reason was a shift of social systems to a “follower/following” mindset.

However with the release of My News it seems Digg has fixed the problem (sort of). Stories from your friends will pop up whenever they are submitted or dugg and you can scroll through pages of stories to support your mutual friends. Although this isn’t exactly a replacement it’s better than no functionality on the site.

A popular way of communication through fellow diggers is using GTalk. Google Talk is an IM application which works directly in-browser through GMail. It also has a desktop version of the software for Windows which displays a full buddy list and IM updates. Diggers will often place their GMail address in their profile to connect with fellow diggers and share links.

Customize your Brand

With each profile you are creating a new iteration of your branded identity. In this sense we can see why it’s so important to add relative information into your bio.

A custom avatar photo is another important piece. Diggers will commonly find your profile through either comments you’ve left or on follow lists of other big Diggers. You want an avatar that’s memorable and will stand out from the crowd. This is important not just for communication between a network of Diggers but to also showcase your stories gone popular.

At the bottom of each story on the front page is a profile link and avatar of the submitter. This is a great way to gain some early publicity once your account becomes large enough. The front page is checked by thousands of users every day so it’s a great way to gain exposure.

Market Yourself

Nobody is going to find out who you are unless you know how to hit the market. On Digg it’s fairly simple albeit time consuming. The fastest way would be to follow most anybody you see who hits the front page on a regular basis. Chances are they know diggers of similar power – and these are the kind of people you want in your network.

Over time through building your digg count and networking with others you should build up a solid foundation for secure Digg submissions. You may begin to notice you’re gaining more followers over time and the rate is speeding up. This is common among such tight networks where powerful profiles are king.

The benefit from gaining more followers than you’re following is to notice how many fresh diggs you’ll gain. When you submit a story it will immediately appear in all of your followers news feeds. This shows the story title with your avatar and statistics so far. When you can track how many new diggs you’re gaining per story submission you’ll start to notice increasing trends week over week.

Just Keep Digging!

The best part about Digg v4 is how free the voting system is. Before the release you only had so many diggs daily you were allocated. If you passed this amount you were unable to digg for 12-24 hours. We can now see Digg rate limiting voters to 50 diggs around every half hour.

If you make it a priority to check Digg multiple times daily you can build a few thousand diggs in just a week or two. The truly powerful profiles will be the ones who rocket into stardom through brute force of will. Just keep digging stories, even if they aren’t in your followers list. Many will check out who has dugg their story and follow those who repeat votes.

To make things slightly easier there’s a tool called Sub DiggerPlus which allows you to track all of your friends’ submissions over a 24 hour period. You are also able to see analytics based on who is digging your stories and how many they’ve dugg recently. I check my stats every week or two and weed out those who aren’t taking care of my diggs.

In truth building a Digg profile is just going to require time and patience. Dedication is key here too, as taking a day off can result in your profile falling behind in the roster. Front page hits aren’t as easy as they used to be. But traffic is slowly returning and Digg may reshape into its former glory.

About Ray Frenden

Ray Frenden is a self-taught illustrator with a penchant for monsters and the macabre.

Drawing from a childhood weaned on old horror comics, pulp fiction, and sci-fi, my brush and ink work hearkens to an older era. Ray‘s sensibilities for line and footing in current color and design trends helps make his work unique.

All Images Copyright Ray Frenden

DepositPhotos.com is your #1 resource for buying and selling Royalty-free photographs and vector images. The vast library of imagestock coupled with our wide variety of flexible purchase options makes it the most convenient and profitable tool for designers, artists and photographers.