Little Box Of Ideas

Why Do You Blog?

Sneh Roy — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:42:30 +0000

Today, I am starting a new series on the blog where I will put up a question that has been burning a hole in the back of my mind for a while and open up a discussion to whoever wants to share their thoughts and opinions. There is a great wealth of knowledge to be uncovered from the experiences of others and to do that, all it takes sometimes is to ask a question. My question to you today is,

"Why Do You Blog?"

Do you blog for money or to feed your soul? How did you start? What is your story?

Here is my story of how I got started with both my blogs.

I was first introduced to the wonderful world of blogging back in 2002 when I found myself getting addicted to a food blog I was frequenting at that time. In 2004, I decided that I had my own flavour to add to the internet and that starting my own food blog would be the most logical step for a self-proclaimed foodie, amateur photographer and a recipe inventor who never really found time to sit down and pen it all in a journal. So I did. I started a food blog.

Then in 2009, I discovered design blogging. A bit late to the design blogging world, I must admit. Within a month, I had voraciously ravaged every post that was out there on most design blogs I fancied. When that spell ended, I felt I had a lot more in me creativity wise to offer. I was learning and discovering a handful of new things every day and decided to share them on a design blog, mine.

As the blog stumbled past its first comment and spluttered shakily towards its tenth, I was happily hammering away at the keys of my keyboard writing post after post. I made and shared graphic freebies, ran contests, wrote tutorials, rounded up inspiration, explained processes and offered free ad space to random people. I blogged to feed my soul. My blog was a creative outlet for my ideas and a means of connecting with other like minded individuals.

I started getting paid for ad space on the blog and it felt good to be able to make some pocket change along the way, but the more revenue I generated, the more it felt like a burden. It still does, but I must admit that I am not strong-minded enough to refuse ad money. Maybe someday I will. Meanwhile, I never compromised the content on the blog, turning away paid reviews of products and services and many a guest post, making sure that nobody influenced the thoughts on my blog other than me. For me it is simple. LBOI is a thought process, a creative journey and not a revenue generating tool and I am determined to keep it that way.

So, I blog for my soul. I blog because writing about something I love liberates me and evolves my thought process. It is kind of like thinking out loud. I know a lot of people write because they need to and a lot write because they have to. I respect both kinds, because we have to do what we have to do. I am just curious to hear everyone’s take on this topic. Please join in the discussion and share your thoughts below.

Note – Photo courtesy Stock Xchng

Free Moleskine Icon Set For Logo Lovers And Designers

Sneh Roy — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:40:56 +0000

I must admit, I have an ~~unholy~~ obsession with moleskines. Any blank, inviting piece of stationery that draws you to write, sketch and create and one that is absolutely beautiful to look at in its humble simplicity, ought to be obsessed about. I have a few moleskines, not many, just a few. They seem to have endless pages and last forever. I seem to be draw to the Cahiers more than any other kind. I love their organic brown covers. I do have a hardbound mini moleskine that is red and is quite spunky and handy in my bag. Lately though, I have been drawn to the classic black ones. I have been thinking about creating a moleskine icon set for almost a year, but I also wanted it to be different. So I made one for logo designers, aficionados and addicts. This set is what my ideal Moleskine set for logo designers would look like. I will be releasing one for Illustrators shortly, but for now, enjoy these little books of gold.

These icons are free for personal and commercial use. They come in 2 sizes each 512px and 256px and are in PNG format. They are free to download, share and use in all your personal and commercial projects. Don’t put a dollar value to them, no resale allowed!

50+ Very Useful Free Vector Illustrator Patterns And Resources From 2010

Sneh Roy — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:37:34 +0000

In my recent jaunts on the interwebs, I have come across some great vector freebies. I have handpicked a few that are free for personal and commercial use (with some requiring mere credits). In this little roundup today, I am listing 50+ awesome free vector illustrator patterns, seamless and otherwise. These are perfect for the scenes and texture treatments in my 365 vector character projet and am really enjoying using them. The 18th set is a very recent vector grunge set which is not technically a pattern or swatch but works beautifully on my vector backgrounds. I have also listed some resources and tutorials that teach you to make seamless vector patterns with absolute ease. Have a browse and download the patterns from the original source pages. Remember to read their terms and conditions before you use them. With the exception of a couple which are from late 2009, most are from 2010.

Vector Illustrator Freebies

1. Gorgeous Ornate Vector Patterns

2. Grungy Fleur De Lis Seamless Vector Pattern By Patternhead

3. Magic Patterns By Pehaa

4. The Geek In Me By Pica-Ae

5. Complex Paisley Vector Patterns

6. Twisted Floral Vector Patterns By Patternhead

7. Ornamental Seamless Pattern

8. Vintage Velvet pattern From Patternhead

9. Stylized Clouds Pixel Patterns By Patternhead

10. Elegant Swirls Vector Patterns

11. Retro Pattern By Designious

12. Free Range Duck Pattern

13. Forget Me Nots Pattern

14. Halftone Madness Illustrator Patterns

15. Valentine’s Day vector Patterns By Colorburned

16. Seamless Destroyed Vectors By Colorburned

17. Alice In Wonderland Pattern [Needs Credit]

18. High Quality Subtle Grunge Vectors – Think Design Blog

Vector Illustrator Pattern Resources

I have found these nifty little pattern tutorials very useful when creating my own vector patterns and swatches.

1. Create A Seamless Folk Pattern Tutorial – Pehaa

2. Create A Damask Pattern Using Madpattern Illustrator Template – Vectortuts+

3. Create A Trendy Seamless Type Pattern – Vectips

4. One Minute To Make Seamless Plaid Patterns In Illustrator

Premium Vector Pattern Resources

These websites sell some amazing vector patterns at dirt cheap prices. Like being in a candy store!

Patternshop

Floralcy

Patterrific

I hope you have enjoyed this little roundup and that you find these resources useful for your design needs. If you know of any websites that provide free or premium high quality vector patterns, please let us know by leaving us a link in the comments below.

2 Fun And Free Vector Scenes For Your Design Projects

Sneh Roy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:45:41 +0000

Everyday when I create new vector graphics, whether they are characters or just simple elements for a poster or website, I always find that there is a real scarcity of vector "scenes". You know the free stuff like brushes and icons that you can download and put together to present your design? I rarely come across plain, no-frills vector scenes that I can use as a blank canvas for my design.

Now, it has been a while since I offered up a freebie on the blog. I have offered Vector Scenes/Background in the past and decided to offer some more. Today, I have for you two vector scenes. They are called "Real Estate" and "Midnight Wish". They are in AI format, bundled up in a zip file. Each and every element can be taken apart and used separately or combined together in a scene. These vector graphics are absolutely FREE for all your personal and commercial projects. So have fun everyone!

Note: It took me an hour to make them in Adobe Illustrator CS4, in case anyone was wondering.

15 Tools To Help You Find The Perfect Color Palette

Paul Maloney — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:23:48 +0000

When designing a website or any other printed media a whole array of elements are vital to the overall look and feel of the project, if any of these aspects are incorrect or poorly thought out the project can suffer. Colour is one of these important parts of design. When choosing colour your initial reaction is "do these colours work together?” after that you have to consider things like accessibility. There are a number of online tools that can assist you with putting together a great palette. I have rounded up 15 such tools that can help you with colour selection, suitability and accessibility for your web and graphic design projects.

1. Check My Colours

This site checks the colours used on your site and discovers how accessible it is to users with any colour deficits.

2. Pictaculous

Pictaculous allows you to upload an image and the site fetches a colour palette from the colours used in the uploaded file.

3. Daily Color Scheme

Each day this site provides its readers with a fresh colour scheme each day which can be saved and downloaded to your own machine in multiple files formats.

4. 4096 Color Wheel

You can use the wheel to discover web safe colours for your project, you can also download your palette once compete.

5. I Like Your Colors

I Like Your Colors grabs the colours used by the site that referred you or you can enter a URL in the form on page to see the colours for a particular URL.

6. Kuler

This well know Abode tool has a huge collection of user generated pallets which you can download, you can also sign up and add your own.

7. Colour Lovers

Colour Lovers is a community driven haven for colour lovers everywhere, there are over 300k users sharing over 1 million palettes.

8. 100 Random Colors

Does what it says on the tin, offers you 100 random colours, each page reload will offer you 100 new colours.

9. Color Scheme Designer

This offers the ability to select your own colours from a wheel and save them into your own palette.

10. Colorotate

Browse and create your own palettes using a slick 3D "wheel", it has numerous options such as blend, hue and tint.

11. ColorSpire

ColorSpire uses a colour wheel to offer a scheme for colour co-ordinating your webpage layout.

12. ColorJack

Using the huge sphere you can make your own palette which can be exporting to Illustrator and Photoshop for example.

13. ColorBlender

This is an online tool for matching and blending your palettes, it can work from one colour and offer suitable matches.

14. ColorHunter

ColorHunter will discover colours used in online images or uploaded images which then are placed into your favourites for later use.

15. 0to255

This easy to use tool will discover variations of a certain colour, which can be handy when using for gradients and borders.