Up until The Noun Project came along, finding high quality icons more often than not felt like searching for a needle in a haystack. I know that when I was on the hunt, I’d inevitably find myself on spam-filled sites or in a jumble of low quality stock images.

The Noun Project is an open-source project dedicated to building a global visual language we can all understand regardless of cultural and language barriers. The site welcomes icon contributions from around the world and a large portion of them are available for use under the Creative Commons license.

Search for those random icons that pop into your head. The library is massive and chances are, they have it. Need an alarm clock? A flower? A croissant? How about sunglasses? Yep, they’re covered.

Top Photo: Made U Look

I’m keeping this short and sweet today: Subtle Patterns is an amazing resource. When I’m designing a website and a solid colored background just won’t do, I head over to their site for something special. I love the sheer variety of simple, tasteful patterns.

The best part is that you can scroll to the footer and in the right corner, there’s a download for a Photoshop .pat file, which is a collection of all the patterns featured on the site, completely free!

If you’re new to using .pat files in Photoshop, here’s how to load and access them (keep in mind that this is one of many ways and there are TONS of tutorials out there):

a. In your Layers palette, click the effects button on the very bottom (second from right) and scroll down to Pattern Overlay.

b. When that dialogue pops up, you’ll see a large square swatch of the default pattern. Click the arrow to the right of that and your full palette of swatches will pop up.

c. Click the arrow on that palette and scroll down to Load Swatches.

That’s it! Have fun with all the awesome patterns!

It’s necessary to have good tunes to work along to and these days, Spotify is where it’s at for me. If you don’t have it, download it now (the basic service is free). You can search for any artist or album and listen to it on the spot and even better, it’s a cinch to save your favorite songs in your personal library.

But even with the endless album recommendations and apps Spotify offers up, sometimes I just want a great playlist. That’s where DesignersMX comes in. Featuring custom mixes submitted by creatives, it’s a fun way to discover new music. The best part is that they each design album artwork to represent their mix and that alone really helps convey the mood.

Most DesignersMX mixes open directly in Spotify and I love that because I can then star my faves for my collection. The mixes are so eclectic and they have both ratings and comments so you can get a feel for what’s good.

Check out DesignersMX, I know you’ll discover some tunes (and album artwork) you love! And let me know what your favorite mixes are — trust me, there’s lot to get through and I’ve just scratched the surface.

Welcome to Tools of the Trade, a column where I’ll be dropping in to share some of my favorite go-to design resources!

Over the weekend, while putting together a custom envelope design for a client, I needed a dieline for a very particular set of dimensions. I was instantly reminded of a great resource I’ve been using for years, Designers Toolbox.

Designers Toolbox is a comprehensive collection of design resources including envelope, business card and postcard sizes and most sections have accompanying dimensions along with downloadable dielines! This is especially helpful if you’re producing items for a client in another country since these measurements aren’t standardized worldwide.

The web resources are fantastic as well. A web banner chart with dimensions, a compilation of basic HTML characters and visuals of web safe areas are just some of the free resources you’ll find.

I hope you’ll enjoy this fantastic resource as much as I do!