The holidays are coming up soon so it’s time to start thinking about what you’d like to give to your friends and family and receive for yourself this year! We’ve put together a great list of things you might enjoy including fun techie toys, design books, helpful apps and other things that you might find helpful or interesting and want to add to your list. We’ve geared our list towards you, our readers and hope you find our list helpful in your search for the perfect gift for your loved ones!

Happy holiday shopping!

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I just love the Superbowl and living in the Phoenix area, I was especially into watching this years game! Although I’m sorely disappointed the Cardinals lost (they were soo close!) the ads this year were outstanding and I was way pumped about the great quality I saw. I think it’s especially noteworthy that they were great since money is obviously tight this year and some companies were still willing to go the extra mile for the Super Bowl. Some of my top picks: GE’s capture the wind ad, the Taco Bell superfast date, Hyundai’s everyone knows our name, the Coke picnic heist, the Clydesdale that had to show off with a bigger stick.. and now for my top 3!

A great logo captures the meaning of a company in a simple, clever, ingenious package. These logos are fun and inspiring, check it out!

Logos were found on logopond.com

This year is full of many new trends and styles. Yellow is a popular color this year and you’ll see it prevalent in many sites. The use of large typography is also really popular, people are using big fonts to welcome users to a site or to call out important lines. Illustration is really in as well, bringing back whimsical styles intended to make you smile. Layered textures are popular as well, creating a really unique and slightly grungy look.

Yellow

Big Typography

Illustration

Layered Textures

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve made a personal new years resolution to be more active with my blog this year. I’d love to post 1-2 times per week, so check back often for lots of good stuff to come!

Free stuff is ALL OVER the web these days! There are open sources applications, stock photos, good tutorials, but as I’ve said before, it’s never easy to find what you need when you need it. I try to collect great resources when I see them and tag them for a rainy day, save great photos here and there, illustrations, grungy textures, etc. I’m going to kick off this year’s posts with a great list of free resources that I’ve found. Feel free to add to the list any free resource you’ve found and enjoy.

Stock Photo Sites
Stock.XCHNG
Morgue File

Vector Downloads
Vecteezy
Dry Icons

Internet Explorer Debugging Tools
IE Net Render
IE Tester

Audio Tools
Audacity

Web Testing
XRAY

Colors
COLOURlovers

Fonts
dafont
1001 Free Fonts
Make your own font with Fontifier

Photo Manipulation for those who don’t have Photoshop
Gimp
Lots of open source applications here

Have you seen any great free resources out there? Do share!

Some of the best sites out there are non-profit sites, and poverty awareness sites are no different! Great design shows a commitment to quality and attention to details, and gives its users a sense of value. Some people notice the quality of the visuals used and the fact that they take pride in their brand, while others just perceive it, they feel good about donating and using their site BECAUSE of the quality of the design. Here are some great sites that are working to fight poverty and decrease hunger in the world.

http://www.endpoverty.org

http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/

http://www.bread.org/

http://www.care.org/

http://www.feedingamerica.org/

http://www.fh.org/

http://www.mazon.org/

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/

http://www.strength.org/

http://www.one.org/