The best free graphic design software Not everyone has the cash to spend kitting themselves out with the most expensive graphic design software, particularly when starting a new business or embarking on a new career in design. There's no denying that paid-for creative software – like Adobe's fantastic Creative Cloud suite of applications – will always be better than a freebie. Exclusive offer: Save 15% on Adobe Creative Cloud now But for those who don't want to pay and have time to do the groundwork, there is some free graphic design software out there that will do the job well. To save you from doing said groundwork, we've compiled this list and divided it into five sections – use the drop-down menu above to navigate to the page you want.
CSS Smart Grid — A Lightweight, Responsive, Mobile First 960 Grid As a Grid System There's only one CSS file to include: smart-grid.css . Place that in <head> your own stylesheet. Wrap your page inside a <div class="container"> . 20 top new tools for freelancers Freelancing looks idyllic from the outside. Working with the best clients, choosing fun projects, determining your own hours and working from home or wherever you like. But there’s a lot that happens under the hood to keep the momentum going. Doing the actual freelance work for your clients never takes up 100 per cent of your time. Soon you’ll be swamped with paperwork and admin – writing proposals, drawing up contracts, sending invoices, writing down tasks and managing your workflow. To accommodate that, we’ve seen an abundance of new tools spring into the market to assist freelancers.
Less Framework 4 I called Less Framework "a CSS grid system for designing adaptive websites". It was basically a fixed-width grid that adapted to a couple of then popular screen widths by shedding some of its columns. It also had matching typographic presets to go with it, built with a modular scale based on the golden ratio. The resources it was originally published with are still available on GitHub. Contrary to how most CSS frameworks work, Less Framework simply provided a set of code comments and visual templates, instead of having predefined classes to control the layout with.
960 Gridder - Lay out websites with ease. What is this? 960 Gridder is an excellent tool for any web developer/ designer that wants to easily align, match and/or lay out websites. The idea came when designing a website for a student organization where I worked with several designers that handed their lay outs and designs in Photoshop format with a similar grid built-in to me. After a while I noticed how hard it became to make sure everything looked exactly how they intended it, especially in the different browsers. 960 Gridder is cross-browser compliant and works well in Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Chrome. Safari 4 Beta and Opera 9 is also working as expected and it should work in Safari 2.x-3.x also.
GridFox - The Grid Layout Firefox Extension » Eric Puidokas » Programming and Designing for the Web GridFox is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It’s easy to customize, allowing you to create the exact grid you designed your layout around. Install GridFox v1.2 More than just a handy development tool, GridFox also proves to be indispensable with the daily production of a grid-based site. SwatchBooker Features Reads color swatches from: Adobe aco, acb, act, ase, acf, bcf, clrAutoCAD acb (unencrypted only!)ColorSchemer csCorel cpl, xml (X5)GIMP gplICC named colors profilesOpenOffice.org socQuarkXPress qcl (+cui)RAL bcsRIFF palScribus xmlVivaDesigner xmlXara jcw
Top 10 Photoshop Plugins for Web Designers in 2016 Toolkits Photoshop wasn’t created as a web design tool, but no one bothered telling us web designers that. Luckily, here are 10 plugins to make Photoshop do to web design what it's intended to do to photographs. Photoshop Plugins for Web Design Suitcase Fusion 6 The perfect add-on for every font-aphile, Suitcase Fusion 6 keeps all your favorite fonts organized and within reaching distance, even in Photoshop. Material Design Color Palette Generator - Material Palette material palette More Material Design chevron_right Palette preview
Solarized - Ethan Schoonover Precision colors for machines and people Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. It has several unique properties. I designed this colorscheme with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays (as well as uncalibrated/intentionally miscalibrated displays) and in a variety of lighting conditions.