45 Secret Design Resources

28 Tools

• The Branding Guidelines Archive A large repository of all famous brand style guides.

• Curaeted is a curated Instagram visuals references for inspiration.

• Off-Grid Great new design website with a bunch of interesting interviews, articles and inspo

• ColorContrast is a webtool to check if your designs meet accessibility standards

• Dalle-3 is finally out and the level of control it offers as a text to image AI platform is unmatched.

• Shot Deck Fully searchable high definition movie stills.

• SearchSystem One of my favourite curated design moodboard website.

• Mockup World All their graphic design mockups are free which is awesome.

• This Design Report that answers some thought provoking questions like What is good design? Who gets to decide?

• Immerse Zone is a reverse search engine that uses AI to find royalty free images. You could drop in a copyrighted image and it’ll find you free alternates.

• Doodleipsum Free illustrations and doodles with amazing customization

• Font Share Around 100 amazing fonts for nothing at all

• Font Joy Generate font combinations

• Flat Icon Millions of free flat icons

• Burst Photos CC0 Stock photos library by Shopify

• Icons8 Stock Photos with tons of customization. Great for Branding Imagery but the AI on some images can be a bit janky

• IconBuddy 180k + open source icons for apps, decks, etc. Just found out about these! Will definitely be using it

• ColorHub I like this color palette generator because it provides both the mood and color names based on it’s attribute. Great to name product skews and to sound smart!

• Eyecandy is a super cool database of over 5,000 GIFs representing the very best visual techniques in the world of filmmaking.

• Xnapper is a fun tool that makes your screenshots look amazing. This could be great for case studies and blogs. Currently only available on Mac though.

• Runway ML Gen2 A multi-modal AI system that can generate novel videos with text, images, or video clips

• Art Directed Mockups Currently my favourite mockups for graphic design

• Framer Website Builder A website builder that works exactly like Figma but last week they launched AI features. Pretty cool!

• Micro Volume Mockups Dope mockups for graphic design

• Pexels Super competitive Unsplash alternative with CC0 images.

• The best Color palette generator

• Google made all their ads public - Google Ads Transparency library is a great tool to see your competitors live ads

• Beautiful Minimal website inspiration - Minimal Gallery

17 Videos and Podcasts

• This video on How to become articulate with your speaking has some great notes for us designers.

• This lovely video by Jake Frew on Your cringe is a superpower

• This video on how to shoot yourself in a cinematic way is really cool. Also the content creator has really good storytelling skills.

• Dan Lok’s 5 copywriting tips for beginners is a solid video that is to the point and can get you started right away.

• This Scott Wilson Interview (Founder of MINIMAL Inc.) goes into kickstarting various startups and designing some of the most impactful products in the market.

• This Rory Sutherland talk might actually be my favourite one so far. For design and marketing enthusiasts.

• Blender Video talking about lighting strategies for a lot of commercial use cases.

• How to Land Big Brands - A small excerpt from a Podcast interview with Jennifer & Amy Hood, co-owners of Hoodzpah.

• This talk by Mike Monteiro is a classic. I’m sharing it incase you haven’t checked out one of the most influential talks about designers and money.

• An amazing TEDx talk on the science of story telling I stumbled upon couple of weeks ago.

• How to write a director’s treatment Visually pleasing video that I took a lot of inspo from lately

• Best Design Advice we have received Gokul Beeda and I share the best design advice we have received so far in our careers in this 40 minutes long podcast.

• Brilliant video where Ali Abdal Asks Genius YouTubers How to Grow a YouTube Channel. A lot of good advice for growing as a designer too.

• Will Gibbons' KeyShot Masterclass courses. (Paid course fyi). With lessons focused on fundamentals, animation and materials, probably the most comprehensive course on keyshot.

• Shaan Puri walks through How to Sell Your Startup for Millions. Quick 17 minute presentation with some secrets.

• My 2nd favorite design podcast - The Business of Authority

• Watched this yesterday and there are so many lessons and beauty in this new video by Scott Yu-Jan. He explains why he customizes everything he buys. From 3D Printers to Power Tools.

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Sushant