14 Resources for the Artistically Challenged
Let's talk. You and I, we are not all that different. Unless you are an artist. If you are, please move on, there's nothing here for you to see.
Ok, are all the artists gone? Let's get back to talking. You and I, we can't do art. We just weren't born with it. Remember art class? Sure, someone might have thought your work was special, but that was your mom. You were dealt some useless talent like math or programming, and visual design was something you always avoided. Your website is no different. It's ugly and there is little you can do. You tell yourself everyday: "I'm not an artist. People will overlook that. They will still visit my ugly website. They will like me anyway." Or maybe you make excuses. We've heard them all. "It's an effective use of whitespace. It's not for everyone. My website reflects who I am, even the bad parts." But an ugly website is an ugly website, and if you can't pay someone to design it for you, you might not be able to save it.
There is, however, hope. From one artistically challenged person to another, here are 14 resources that will help you make your site more attractive. These are not tutorials but rather images, patterns, and icons ready for use, and everything is free. I know you will like them because I use them too. So enough talking, and on with the links.
Icons
- famfamfam Icons
- "I find churning out little web icons fairly relaxing. Other people do icons better, but I love free stuff, and I'm sure you do too." These are the words of a good person. Thanks to Mark James, you can get an entire package of icons for every use, and they all look great too. Chances are you've already seen most of these icons on other websites and haven't even realized it.
- Feed Icons
- Matt Brett did us all a favor by providing the new standard for feed icons in a great package with just about every image format I can think of. They are very easy to customize; just look at mine next to my feed links.
- Mini Pixel Icons
- Added 4-10-2006: Over 320 icons at 14×14 pixels. This set has just about everything a website could need.
Patterns
- squidfingers / patterns
- 140 patterns that you can use however you like. These aren't cheap patterns either; check them out and you'll see that every one of them is attractive and complex.
- Pattern4u
- 248 patterns. Some come from squidfingers but there are enough unique ones to make this gallery worth checking out.
- citrusmoon
- Citrusmoon offers free patterns, tiles, and backgrounds, and they all look great. There's also free conversation, but you can get that here.
- The Inspiration Gallery
- The Inspiration Gallery offers free backgrounds and borders, but they require that you link to them. Still not a bad deal, though.
Images
- stock.xchng
- Stock.xchng might be the leading free stock photo site, with contributions from tons of users in every category. Just make sure that you read the usage restrictions for each image; some want you to contact them before you use their image in any commercial work.
- morgueFile
- Just like stock.xchng, morgueFile offers tons of free stock photography.
Dingbats
Dingbat fonts are fonts sets with images instead of letters and they are a very useful source of graphics. You can type them into your graphics editor and resize them to your liking, and you will find that dingbats exist for just about every category you can think of. These are just a few links to dingbat collections on the web, all are free but make sure to check for any usage restrictions.
Bullets
- Bullet Madness
- The users at Stylegala have uploaded 200 bullets, arrows, and icons that make lists and links look great.
Full Templates
Sometimes you might just throw your hands up into the air and say, "Forget it! I can't do a website at all. I wish I could find one completely done for me!" Well, there are two sites that offer tons of user submitted designs that are free, and they come with everything; template files, CSS, and images.
Anything else?
I didn't mention tutorials because you can find tons of those just by searching. I also didn't mention graphics programs but I'll plug two free ones right now: GIMP for bitmaps and Inkscape for vectors.
If there is a graphics resource out there that you think should be included, mention it. If I get enough of them I'll make a second list.
So to all my fellow artistically challenged peoples in the world, enjoy. We might not be artists but there's more of us than there are of them!
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Dude! Sweet!
It's about time you shared how you managed to improve your work from "not pleasing to the eye" to this "can you do that to my website, too?" level.
Good job. I approve
I hope to use some of these soon!
These were the most personal and touching words I've came across these days :)! Thanks
Aha! I need some icons and famfamfam.com is PERFECT. Thank you for sharing!
Nice list! It takes so long to find this stuff on your own. You might be interested in this list of free icons (GPL,CC,LGPL) I made. They are all very good.
Cheers!
colr.org might be handy.
Glad that people find the icons useful, you'll be happy to know that theres a new release coming very soon (I'm hoping to hit 1000 icons in the silk set, along with a couple of slight edits and additions to the flags set to make it a little more useful).
maxpower & Lloyd: thanks for those links.
maxpower: Your gravatar rocks.
Mark: It's true, I've heard nothing but praise for the silk set.
Woohoo! You're getting del.icio.us'd!
Very nice list… A+
Great job you did collecting these
Thanks!
some of them I already know, bit anyway, very useful collection. Thank you!
Hey Christian,
one thing I want to add:
You could maybe mention a selection of resources for Photoshop brushes!
Greetings from Germany
Birgit: Good idea, but I don't use Photoshop, so I don't know any resources for that. If you know any, let me know
p.s. I'm learning German, and I want to work in Germany this summer. Where in Germany are you?
Nice set of resources but I am still left with my biggest problem! I am still artistically challenged and don't know how to use those resources!
Peter: You may need to seek professional help
Thank you for the resources, Christian. The icon resources will prove extremely handy for an upcoming project.
Here's another awesome icon set: http://ndesign-studio.com/resources/pixel_icons.htm
Over 320 icons!
@Chris
sorry for seeing your follow-up first now.
I am in Southern Germany, near Stuttgart. Great to hear you want to work in Germany! What exactly do you have in mind?
I have a small collection of bookmarks tagged Photoshop (http://del.icio.us/bz_icehorse/Photoshop - very incomplete though), and written an article in my blog.
One of my favourite brushes page is this:
http://missm.paperlilies.com/01_brushes.html
Birgit: I just really want to work in Germany and I'm willing to take what I can get. I will probably end up with something in electrical engineering, but if I could get something in web development that would be cool too. I have my German resume on my "about me" page, though it's a bit sparse. It's getting close to the summer so I don't know if I'll get anything. We'll see.
Oh, great page! I'll surely be using some of these for my site.
Can u please help me with the game Dingbats? the problem is all the answers have the "&" key in them but it wont let me type the"&" key so I'm stuck on this same puzzle can you please help me get past this because I've really grown to love this game and now I'm stuck like chuck and I'm getting very disgusted. PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!