Over the years I have come across lots of gadgets and online tools, some I’ve found useful some, not so much. In this article I’m going to run through a few of the online tools I keep in my bookmarks bar.
Most of them are down to personal preference, but hopefully you might get some ideas of your own. Do you have any online tools you like to use? Why not share your ideas?
ColourLovers
Colourlovers is a creative community that shares colours, palettes and patterns. I use this site very early on in my design process, Colourlovers is a great site to get a colour palettes based either on your ideas or your clients preferences, you can search thousands of different combinations and once you have found two or three you would like to try out you can download a very handy zip file with all the relevant CSS colour values, Photoshop, Illustrator colour palette files.
Lorem Ipsum
www.lorem-ipsum.info/generator3
Lorem Ipsum is a designers best friend, it’s used as place holder copy to demonstrate the visual presentation of typography layout and font in designs. There are many online tools that generate Lorem Ispum copy and it doesn’t really matter which one you use, but I like to use this one because you can tick the radio button “Don’t start with”Lorem Ipsum” which I feel gives the copy generated natural flow when you are working back and forth cutting and pasting the copy.
Stock.XCHNG
Stock.XCHNG is a free stock image library, which in July 2009 was taken over by Getty images. This is a great site to find temporary images to use in designs, you can usually find an image which can match what your looking and some cases can even be used in your final design, just make sure to check the images licensing.
Em Calculator
I’ll be honest, in my head I still work in pixels, I know its better to work in relative measurements values, scaleable etc. But when I’m thinking about fonts I’m still think of things in pixels, I use this Em Calculator to get the em values I need to use in my CSS.
Icon Finder
Icon finder does exactly what is says on the tin, finds icons. It’s a great tool and a must for any designers bookmarks. You can search for icons that can be used for commercial use, convert fav Icons and they even offer a custom service.
