Recent design reviews

Computer hardware for graphic designers

After creative inspiration, probably the most important tools that graphic designers draw upon are their computer equipment. To this end, we have written up a guide to the various hardware tools that freelancers and self-employed designers might need, when setting up a new business.

Hard Disks | Printers | Portable or Desktop | Scanners & Digital Cameras | Mac or PC | Computer Monitors | Freelancer or Studio

Font management software tools reviewed and compared ?

Graphic designers work with lots of fonts and these need to be managed to prevent problems further down the line. We have reviewed the major font management utilities and compared them against each other to which of them takes the strain best in a busy graphic arts studio environment.

Font Management Tools – Comparison and reviews of font management applications, including Suitcase, FontAgent Pro and MasterJuggler. Also, choosing a font management tool.

Living without Photoshop - is it possible?

Adobe Photoshop has become the image editor of choice for graphics professionals. Few designers would argue that its position as the primary bitmap editing tool is rightly at the top of the pile. But this does not mean that there are no other choices for designers who can't, or don't want to, use Photoshop.

As well as having another look at the basics of Photoshop, Design Talkboard has reviewed four other digital graphics editors, with the aim of showing that there are alternatives to Photoshop.

Photoshop training and tutorial reviews

Design Talkboard took a look at a selection of some of the numerous online Photoshop training resources, to try find some good, but free, tutorials.

Reviews of 3D design, modeling and animation software.

3D software has quickly become of the the mainstays of many parts of the design industry. It is ubiquitous in that it is used in a number of different ways across a huge range of design disciplines. Obviously, we all know of their use in 3D games, like Half-Life and movies from companies such as Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic. But 3D software is also used by 'static' graphic designers for print purposes and by a large variety of digital illustrators. Some of the packages are even used to export animations to Flash, for use in interactive web sites.

Part 1			Part 2
Lightwave 3D	Cinema 4D	3D Studio Max	Strata 3D CX	Maya	SoftImage	FormZ

Graphic design book reviews

We've featured a selection of design books for a wide range of designers and design students - from advanced design theory, to digital image manuals. We hope you find our selection useful. Please keep checking back, as we will update this section regularly.

Design Secrets	The Non-Designer's Design Book	Digital graphic design	Universal Principles of Design

FTP client tools for your web sites

A selection of FTP tools for web designers and developers. We've chosen the best FTP software for both Mac and WIndows operating systems and reviewed them in action.

Captain FTP	EmFTP	Transmit	CuteFTP

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