26 Free Icon Sets We Love

We love icons a lot. Here are some of our 26 of our favorite, free icon sets from all over the web. Check them out and help spread the icon love.
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Top 10 Places to Work as a Graphic Designer

Find out where to work in the USA if you want to earn the most money and have the most benefits – that’s if you can get the job!

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Online Tools for Working Abroad

As many of you know, as of Febuary 2008, I will be living and working from the sandy beaches of Costa Rica. As nice as it sounds to work from the web in the Caribbean, there are a number challenges to overcome. Snail mail is almost impossible to receive, internet connections come and go, and phone services are never 100% reliable.
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You Suck at Photoshop

Ok, so you may not suck at Photoshop, but you could probably stand to learn a few more things. I doubt very many of us are masters of all the tools, shortcuts, filters, plugins, and numerous other resources that are found in the massive program that is Photoshop. If you are humble enough to admit that you still have a thing or two to learn about Photoshop, then this list is hear to help.
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Great Illustrator Designs

I noticed a few people were finding our blog by searching for great Illustrator designs. So, I decided to do waste my day searching the web for some of the best adobe illustrator designs out there. It was hard to find work that was 100% Illustrator, so a few of these designs use other graphics programs. that said, I did try to only include images that were mostly Illustrator designs.
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Top 10 CSS Resources

This si a collection of some nice CSS resources, codes, and files to help you make your CSS shine. There are a lot of really awesome CSS based menus in this list. They were all just sooo well designed and coded that I couldn’t resist. Hopefully these tools CSS resources will either make your work a little bit easier, or at least give you the ideas you need.

CSS Library - **OUTLAWS PICK** Tons of menus, layouts, and more.

ADxMENU - Create some advanced CSS menu designs.

70 CSS Galleries - A list of 70 CSS gallery sites.

How to Create a Block Hover Effect for a List of
Links - A good skill to have, learn how to create hovered list.

CSS Tabs - Who needs Ajax! Create tabs with just CSS.

Pull Quotes - Create better looking quotes.

Label Links By File Type - Learn how to create icons to lable your links. If your lazy, check out this tool.

MyCelly - A good collection of a variety CSS layouts. Includes layouts for portfolio type sites.

CSS Tinderbox - Another selection of flawlessly codded CSS layouts.

Sticky Footer - Create a sticky footer with CSS that actually works.

10 Worthy Options for Online Business Card Printing

There are a staggering number of options for printing business cards online. Unless you’re lucky enough to have quality, affordable options locally, you’re likely to end up patronizing these companies heavily for both your business needs and for client’s print jobs. Which ones are worth your time and money?

Base price is the price for 500 cards with 4 color front and blank back and all other default options, or as close to that configuration is possible with that printing. All prices are in USD, and current as of December 2007.

Moo

Base Price: $99.95
Minimum Order: 100
Why you should have them in your Rolodex (and by Rolodex, I mean your bookmarks, obviously): You,ve probably heard of Moo before, but the point bears repeating. Moo makes quirky little cards printed with as many different images as you’d like from your Flickr account or via upload. Full color front with up to 6 lines of customized text on the back. A must-have for photographers and illustrators.

Plasma Design

Base Price: $1199.00
Minimum Order: 100
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: Okay, I know: they’re expensive. Really expensive. But custom-cut, etched, brushed stainless steel business cards would definitely make an impression at your next meeting.

PlasticPrinters.com

Base Price: $460.00
Minimum Order: 50
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: Plastic cards in a variety of thicknesses with all the bells and whistles you could ever want; including raised credit card type. Oh, the possibilities.

ShineBox Print

Base Price: $242.00
Minimum Order: 200
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: ShineBox has a unique concept: mini booklets of tear out business cards. Pulling out your custom, full-color booklet and tearing out a card is bound to make an impression. For a few extra bucks you can have multiple designs in each booklet, allowing you to do a coordinated series of cards. The possibilities, as they say, are endless.

Greener Printer

Base Price: $59.00
Minimum Order: 500
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: Greener Printer is a fully environmentally-friendly service, from papers (three great recycled options) to inks (soy), to shipping. The printing is beautiful, and I’ve had good luck with their customer service.

EnMasse Media

Base Price: $67.50
Minimum Order: 1000
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: 100% post-consumer recycled business cards and top print quality at a great price. And they’re Canadian, if you’re into that sort of thing.

PS Print

Base Price: $44.98
Minimum Order: 250
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: The only really exciting option here is die-cut cards. There are a number of pre-defined shapes you can use, or for a bit extra you can have a custom die made.

OvernightPrints.com

Base Price: $35.95
Minimum Order: 100
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: Fast and cheap are the best things you can say about OvernightPrints.com. They offer a few nice options like partial UV coating and rounded corners, and they use a nice, heavy stock, but let’s face it: if you were mostly interested in quality, you’d take your business elsewhere. Print quality is hit and miss (even for reprints), and customer service is an adventure, but the prices and delivery times will keep you coming back for more.

PrintPlace

Base Price: $25.50
Minimum Order: 250
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: Another budget option, but with a few more options than OvernightPrints.com, including custom trims, three coating options, and four paper options.

Aladdin Business Cards

Base Price: $36.00
Minimum Order: 250
Why you should have them in your Rolodex: While most big online printers offer somewhere between one and three paper stock options, Aladdin has about 20, including linen paper, a variety of iridescent stocks, plastics, and Yupo. They also offer foiling, scoring, and perforating. If you need creative results on a tight budget, this might be a good option.

Conclusion

What’s missing? Letterpress printers, of course. I’m not aware of any letterpress providers that provide the kind of streamlined ordering process as the printers abov; it’s just not suited to it. If you’re looking for letterpress and can’t find a local printer to build a relationship, two starting points for online letterpress are A. Maciel Printing and Dependable Letterpress.

As ever-improving digital presses and fierce competition among printers drive prices down, we as designers and business owners reap the benefits. There are great options at any price point for your next batch of business cards, from stainless steel to 100% recycled papers. Never again will we as designers have to rely on Kinko’s or your local copy shop to print business cards.

Free Grunge Style Brushes

Looking for some awesome, free grunge style brushes for photoshop? Well, look no further! Here you will find 10 of my favorite grunge style brushes for photoshop. Best part about them? They are all free and can be use din commercial work! Let me know what you think of them. If you have any other great grunge style brushes, drop me a line and I will add them to the list!

Visit Grunge-Style.com for even more grunge style resources.

Free Grunge Style Brushes for Photoshop

Grunge Brushes By Jammix

grunge.22 by *ShadyMedusa-stock

Procedural Grunge Brushes by *lorddarq

Borders 02 by *candy-cane-killer

Despirited Grunge Brushes Set1 by ~Despirited

Straight Grunge Lines Brushes by ~DieheArt

scratchy grunge by ~drowningheart-stock

Grunge Brushes 005 by ~Tackybrush

Rewarding Your Clients During the Holidays

Rewarding Your Clients During the Holidays - Do it on a budget.
Most freelance designers don’t have the money or the means to send out lavish fruit baskets or crystal paper weights to their clients for the holidays. Not to mention no one really likes that crap anyways. So we are left with one question, how can a freelance designer reward his clients during the holiday season?

It goes without saying that most freelance designers are on a budget. Many, myself included, probably couldn’t even afford to send out cards. Luckily, we as designers always have something offer, our skills. Instead of sending you clients a crappy thank you letter, why not offer them something for free?

I’m not talking about a website redesign or a new branding image, but just something simple and that doesn’t take a lot of time. Here is a list of a few ideas that freelance designers can thank their clients during the holidays without breaking the bank:

• Business Card Design – Offer to give their business card a makeover.
• Graphic Email Signature – Easy to make and takes no time at all.
• Banner – Offer to create a holiday banner for your clients to use on their website or emails.
• Meta Tag Optimization – Web designers, offer to optimize or update a clients Meta tags.
• Icons – Design a basic icon set and send to all your clients.
• Wallpaper – Offer to create a company wallpaper.
• Greeting Card – Create a very basic company themed greeting card design.

All of these ideas are something that don’t take long to produce. Don’t spend a lot of time on them, after all they are just gifts. Offer your gift, if they accept, create one quality design and send it off. If they don’t like it, oh well. It’s the thought that counts, right?

Making Money When Things Get Slow

Unless you’re design rockstar, the freelance lifestyle tends to be feast or famine. One minute your taking your girl to steak houses and clubs, the next your stuck at home with takeout and a movie rental. That’s just the way it goes. So how can one make money when things get slow? The key word here is passive income.

There are a billion of those crappy e-book, get rich quick, sales pages out there offering to help us do just that. But as anyone can see, many are bogus. Until recently there wasn’t a reputable list of passive income money makers. Freelance Switch has a sister site that has create a nice passive income list.

This list will include many of the same resources as well as some additional ones geared toward designers and photographers. Many of these services also offer affliate programs to help you earn even more income. Some of these links are my personal affiliate, if so I will mark them as affiliate links. Please help support the site by using my affiliate links.
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