This collection contains 26 Color and Black & White (RGB/3400 x 2300) high-res royalty free images for use. Photographed and styled to have a classic film feel, these sky images are great to use for your backgrounds or textures.

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DOWNLOAD ME (ZIP FILE 168mb)

Dropped this image from 352kb to 86kb...not bad

I recall a user on Reddit mentioning a small application called ImageAlpha a few weeks back. It was the first I have heard of this software so I thought I would give it a whirl. If it’s new to you too…basically it can dramatically reduce the size of your png files. Hey all of us (at least the web geeks) could use this on our site designs. I was curious how much space I could save so I took a larger version of the image above which was 2285 x 2300 RGB photoshop image and did a little comparison.

Here are my results:

ImageAlpha is a standalone application, so it adds an additional step to your production process. Too bad it’s not available as a Photoshop plug-in that is accessable through the “save for web” window.

Anybody else have experience with this software?

SEO SERP is a great plug-in for Chrome. The plug-in allows a user to type in a keyword or phrase and check to see which position their website ranks in Google organics. This is a heck of a lot more efficient than clicking through the first 50 pages of results only to have missed your website listing on page 2. While none of these tools are 100% accurate, SEO SERP still gives you a pretty good idea where/if your site is listed.

For the cold dreary days…

Download the Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) file.

What’s an ASE file?

I own a few design books but this has to be one of my favorites. I acquired it around 10 years ago when a fellow coworker gave me a bunch of her dad’s old design books that she was getting ready to toss. I gave most of the others aways but I always held onto this one. Check out the pdf.

Titled: Advertising Layout and Art Direction
Written by Stephen Baker
Published in 1959 by McGraw-Hill

Published in 1959 places this book right about the time in which Mad Men is set. If you’ve ever watched the show, it’s hard not to imagine the ads and designs from this book floating across the desks at Sterling-Cooper. Some of the info is obviously a little out dated, but it’s a great resource to see how many design firms were (are) set up. It’s also dives a bit into the early psychology of advertising, which is best described in the BBC Documentary “The Century of The Self” (interesting documentary on early consumerism)

There’s quite a few used copies on Amazon. It’s also fallen out of copyright, so you can download a pdf version here.

The copy I own is old, worn, yellowed and torn. Which I think gives it personality. I’ve used the texture of the book cover in a couple of design projects. Feel free to download the textures for your own use.

These files can be handy to use when you have designed a logo for a client. By laying your designs out on real world objects, it helps the client visualize what their end product will be. Files are 3000x3000px, feel free to use in your upcoming presentations.

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I started using ASE (or Adobe Swatch Exchange) swatches after stumbling across Adobe’s Kuler a few years back. I now use ASE swatch libraries for most of my client’s projects. Download the ASE file for the color palette at the top of this article.

So what are ASE Swatch Libraries? ASE’s are basically customized color palettes in which you choose colors and export them to a self-contained file from Illustrator for future use in Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop. Importing the ASE files works very much like importing any other color swatch such as the preset Pantone® colors. Once imported the swatch will give you a stand alone palette window to hold your colors.

ASE files are a great tool to utilize when you have several different projects which use the same color scheme (such as company colors). It also helps designers/production artists/illustrators from inadvertently using a wrong color when manually adding in each color. If you have a project that requires a team of people, ASE files are a quick and easy way to share the color palette and also ensure the correct colors are being used.

Create your own ASE Color Swatch:

1. Open a new document and draw a box for each color you would like in your color swatch.
2. Fill each box with your desired color.
3. Select all of the colors in the existing color swatch window and delete them.
4. Now that you have an empty swatch window. Click each square that you created and drag the colors into the swatch library.
5. To export your ASE file, simply go to the drop-down box in the color palette and click. “Save swatch library as ASE…”
6. Name it, click safe and you are done.

Import a ASE Color Swatch into Illustrator:

1. In an open or existing document click the drop down arrow on your Swatches Palette
2. Select “Open Swatch Library>Other Library
3. Select the ASE file you would like to import and click open
4. A new palette box will appear with your imported colors

The following videos are a visual walk-through to import and export the ASE swatches.

EXPORT:

IMPORT:

I want to share a few vector halftone patterns that I put together. Feel free to download them. They are all in vector format so you can resize them to your needs. Enjoy!

Download the patterns here.