TITLEOFMAGAZINE
All-you-can-eat brain mulch. The creative process stripped open and the wires fiddled with. Free chunks of media: animal, vegetable, musical, printed and tangible.
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Archive for the ‘Raw Materials’ Category
PICOL: Pictorial Communication Language
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
I’m not a fan of prefab ready to go icons and graphics. Especially on the web where different styles and design elements are thrown together. There’s no point re-inventing the wheel though and PICOL does just that. PICOL (PIctorial COmmunication Language) provides a solid framework for saving time and allowing anyone with meager design/technical skills to freely re-purpose these all-purpose icons. With 102 icons total, PICOL covers most of the bases. I’ll stick to designing my own icons, though to save time or seek inspiration I might give it a look.
Tags: Graphic Design, icons, vector, Web Design
Posted in Raw Materials | No Comments »
Raw Materials: HYPE framework for Flash
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
I have been shying away from Flash lately as its not supported by many mobile devices and comparable open technologies like jQuery, Raphaël, and Canvas get better each day. And I don’t know Actionscript 3.0.
HYPE might make me dust off my copy of Flash. In a style similar to Processing, HYPE does the heavy lifting for Flash coding. Making this fun again. From HYPE’s site:
HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program.
To get started, the user needs only the most basic knowledge of programming – variables, conditionals, loops, and functions, for example.
As the user learns more about programming they can extend HYPE and thus grow their skills, while at the same time inspiring the next generation.
Now, that’s not to say HYPE is just for people who are new to programming. Instead, HYPE is for anyone, regardless of skill, who wants to play with code. Fundamentally, the point of HYPE is to make Flash fun again. We made HYPE to help bring back the playfulness that once defined our community.
HYPE – come out and play!
Tags: design, Flash, Process, processing, Web Design
Posted in Raw Materials | No Comments »
Beautiful Infographics from a 1939 design handbook
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
These beautiful infographic images are scanned from the 1939 book Graphic Presentation by Willard Cope Brinton. Visit Professor Michael Stoll’s Flickr stream to view more pages at high resolution.
Tags: data, design, Graphic Design, infographics, visualizing
Posted in Neat, Raw Materials | No Comments »
Raw Materials: Free Stock Photos & Textures
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
The Internet is full of places for finding those stock photos of overly happy women working customer support and businessmen striking a deal for serious business. However, maybe you need an image or texture for your blog, reference, design work, or art work.
Fortunately there are plenty of places online for free stock images and textures. Always make sure to check licensing as perhaps an image is free but might require permission or may not be available for commercial use.
stock.xchng
One of the oldest resources for free stock images. Relatively recently acquired by Getty Images many budding would be stock photographers cut their camera and illustration chops here.
Openphoto
A growing gallery of images some with restrictions and some without. Many of the images are out of focus or require some Photoshop tuning, but the range is stunning.
Morguefile
A great collection of images for reference, remixing, or backgrounds. The images tend to be less people based than stock.xchng and focused towards artists and designers.
Mayang’s Textures
I’ve used this site for years for creating 3D textures, backgrounds, and textures. The images are high resolution so are ideal for creating seamless tiles. The limit is 20 images per day, per IP address. You can buy a DVD for a mere $40 USD containing all the images if you hit the limit often.
CG Textures
Like Mayang’s, this site is designed and organized primarily for use as textures. The images are primarily of flat textures such as rust, steel, and organic fauna.
Flickr
It’s no secret that Flickr has many, many images– but many of them are vacation shots or drooling babies. Those vacations shots can be useful sometimes– like this quite elaborate use of a vacation shot in the film Iron Man. Just make sure its okay to use the image according to the creator’s wishes.
Tags: 2d, 3d, Graphic Design, stock photos, textures, Web Design
Posted in Raw Materials | No Comments »
Free Band Names
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Teenagers Are Idiots
The Sex
Nipples On Your Shirt
Exercise Science
Progesterone Frontiers
Bowling League
A Tradition of Cirrhosis
Legacy of Estrogen
HMS Ladyfriend
Church of Jesus Christ, Detective
Assumed Celibate
- – - – - – -
YOU’RE WELCOME
Tags: band names, Mulch, Music
Posted in Junk File, Music, Raw Materials | No Comments »
Raw Materials: Social Networking Bookmark Icons
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Scouring the web it was hard to find social networking icons that were not 3D Boxes, bottled shaped, or otherwise irregular. So as the cliché goes sometimes if you want a job done you have to do it yourself. These basic logo icons for Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, and Delicious are suitable to use as is or modify for a more custom look.
Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, and Delicious Icons
The file is a vector EPS version 3.0 file so it should open in most graphics programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Inkscape and many more. They will be used as part of a redesign of this very site (coming soon). If you find these icon logos useful let us know!
Tags: Graphic Design, internet, Web Design
Posted in Raw Materials | 1 Comment »
Raw Materials: Venetian Renaissance Scans
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
Click here for a gallery of ancient hand-cut fonts, illustrations and borders, all free and clear to alter and reuse.
I found this book for a dollar at a garage sale and it looked too good to keep to myself. Great for design projects that require a medieval touch. Ten scans up currently, more on the way. Angels, saints, branches, lions and giant fancy letters.
Link to any projects you use these on in the comments. Someone want to whip up a font?
Tags: book, design, medieval, print, public domain, Raw Materials, renaissance, scans
Posted in Featured, Raw Materials | 1 Comment »