Digg is still an amazingly popular way to get the news. Now we are beginning to see a new brand of site, a more niche-focussed version of digg, arriving (Design Float, Vot.eti.me, Design Bump, WP Scoop, etc). If you’re thinking about starting one for your niche, have on fear, there’s a whole bunch of free scripts in various languages avaialble:

-PHP and MySQL
-Smarty Template Engine
-Module Engine
-Most used and largest community
-Affero General Public License
Download | Demo

-PostgreSQL, Python and Memcached
-Extremely stable
-Not well documented
-Difficult to set up
Download (git repo) | Demo

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Check out this awesome set of great looking, high resolution tree brushes!

There are, quite literally, thousands of “splatter” or “blood” photoshop brushes out there. However, this is the first good set I’ve seen in a long time. Link.

Here’s a nice set of very cute bumble bee photoshop brushes. Might be useful, you never know.

Graphic design has evolved thanks to the internet and it has been taken from the artist basement to everybody’s screen. But as it happens with computer sciences, graphic design is a very wide concept nowadays: web-site designers, design in advertising, cartoonists, illustrators, etc. But what about real old-fashioned artists? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Salvador Dalí or Vincent Van Gogh would do if they were born in this digital era. Maybe there is some Leonardo Da Vinci out there, who knows?

As both artist and music addict myself, I often pay close attention to CD artwork, where imagination goes beyond the standards. This aspect of graphic design often gives a concept to the artist, and he is able to approach that concept from his own style, since it is style what defines each artist: there is some point of recognition each time you pick up a CD whose cover has been made by an artist that you like. You can tell it is from that artist.

I would like to dedicate some of my work here at Resource Pile to review some of the greatest artists in this area. Since there are many, feel free to suggest or recommend your own favorites, we could compile a good point of inspirational resource here.

Before going deeper into each style and artist, a few names and some overview of what is yet to come:

Dave McKean: He’s worked for Testament, Dream Theater, Counting Crows or Tori Amos. Take a look:

Derek Riggs: Remember the 80s? Remember the old british heavy metal band Iron Maiden? Remember Eddie, their mascot? Derek Riggs was the artist behind the vast majority of Iron Maiden’s artwork. And there were no computers back then, it was all hand-made!! The first CD cover that impressed me when I was a kid was this one:

Niklas Sundin: Independent artists are my favorites. This swedish artist/musician has brought the darkness in images, he has done several projects for extreme metal bands (Dark Tranquillity, At The Gates), with pretty nice results. Very imaginative and original:

This is just some of the fantastic artwork you can find out there. I would like to approach each artist and style individually, since each one inspires our creative instincts in different ways. Again, if you want to recommend or suggest your favorite artists, do not hesitate.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, design consciously.

Here’s a site of awesome round Christmas-themed icons from Dryicon.

Hello, everyone

I have recently joined Resource Pile as a new crew member, and I would like to drop some lines as an introduction for my forthcoming work as a writer here.

I don’t want you to get bored and stop reading, so I will put it in form of a dialogue. And as an artist myself, I have a very subtle and uncomprehensible sense of humor, so bear with me ;)

Who are you?

My nickname is Solinger, a graphic designer/artist and cartoonist. I work professionally in many areas of design, but I specialize in custom and creative design as mascots/toons for different brands and companies. Do you want to see how I look? I made a self portrait some time ago:

(Note: This might be me. It might not be me as well.)

You’re quite ugly, but I’m interested in what you do. Can I see your work?

No, it’s top secret govern-related work, if I tell you, they would kill me. I mean, yeah, take a look to some of my early work, as I’ve been working mostly offline for local enterprises, I’m migrating contents to my new online profile: http://solingerportfolio.wordpress.com

What is your purpose behind Resource Pile?

That one is easy. I will be reviewing anything related to graphic design in its most artistic sense, as a contribution to the splendid work you’ve got already here.

What do you mean with “artistic sense”? The Mona Lisa and stuff?

Uhmm, not exactly. By artistic sense I mean creativity as a self-fulfilling goal. I said this to look cultivated, but I don’t really know what it means. In simple words: I will focus on artistic and inspirational side of graphic design, like illustration or cartoon-like design.

I see. And what will I obtain from this?

You will be way cooler than you are right now. Aside from that, you will get in touch with the work of very different artists and styles, and even more: you will have access to tutorials and lessons from those artists themselves. Gathering all that information together and delivering it to you will be both my mission and reward.

You said you would pay me for asking you questions like these. Are we done now? Where’s my money?

Errr… shhhh!!! We will work it out afterwards, keep asking.

Uhmm… how regularly will you be posting at Resource Pile?

Good boy, I like this question. Well, I will try to be as regular as possible, but my outcome as a writer will depend on the relevance of the information I have to write about. I won’t write anything that doesn’t provide some quality to our readers.

How did you get involved in Resource Pile in the first place?

Well, the great minds behind Resource Pile were in need of someone to add as a counterpoint to their extensive and magnificent work. They found nobody, so they ended up asking me.

Nah, just kidding. As a graphic designer oriented to an artistic side, I was interested in being that counterpoint and offer Resource Pile a new strong pillar, and fulfill my need of verbal self expression.

Seems like a good deal. Am I going to get paid or what?

Here, take the money and run. I hope we made it clear to our readers, if someone complains, I will give your e-mail address…

Microbuttons is a great resource for those awesome little 80px by 15px buttons you see. There’s a whole bunch of them for various different websites and web services, be sure to search for anything you might be looking for. A nice addition to the other list of microbuttons.

Digital times haven’t swallowed up old-style cartoonists, there’s room for everyone within the digital art world. Scott Johnson is a fantastic artist and cartoonist who brings around the geek culture throughout his extralife.

Nowadays, Scott offers quite a wide range of inspirational and educational material: from podcasts to video-lessons of his design techniques. But he started off as a humble cartoonist who came up with a web-comic three times a week. Today, I would like to analyze his style and evolution over the years, this would be a good resource for all those cartoonist wannabees out there.

This is the first web-comic published in myextralife.com:

Here, you can observe shadows made directly with the pencil (i.e: black lines over the couch). The background scenarios lack of detail, coloring looks flat although an effort of spreading different shades of color is already present.

Back to present day. His strips have improved substantially:

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Just stumbled accross this simple yet wonderful CSS cheat sheet. Although it might not be very useful to someone familiar with CSS, it could become a great learning tool and reference for anyone, no matter what level of skill.

Vexteezy has released a great new icon set of sketch style icons. They are completely free and are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Resource Pile version 2.0. Upon first inspection you’ll notice just the new design, we went for very minimalist, content focussed design this time. But why? Basically, the previous design didn’t work. While the idea behind it was a nice idea, to have multiple ‘content streams’, each separated into their own sections, it never worked in practice. The site became too fragmented, as did the wide array of feed options. Not only this, but the manual feed customization tool didn’t always work, and had issues, although I’m still planning on making a WP plugin out of this, but a lot more advanced.

We used to have: features, resources, inspiration & asides. Now we have basically one section, which is split into a group of categories which you can see at the top of each page. Generally this can be cosidered features and resources. Why no inspiration or asides? Well, inspiration isn’t needed really, because there are plenty of CSS galleries out there. And asides were just a waste of time, because all the great content can easily be found via sites built for finding new content, aka Digg & Design Float.

You will notice we still have an inspiration category, we will be running much deeper inspiration posts via this.

So, what’s actually new?

Apart from the design, our focus at Resource Pile is changing. We want to bring you more features, more content you care about, but less often. We’ll still have resources, because that’s essentially the point of Resource Pile, but we’ll be having more and more collections of icons, brushes and websites. More posts on inspiration from both digital and traditional art forms and more articles, including a marketing series.

We now have a Twitter account, so if you don’t like RSS subscription, but still want notifications, go follow Resource Pile on Twitter.

We also have only one feed now, which is our resources and features together. No small asides or inspiration however, only good content you actually care about. As well as this there is now an email subscription link, something we neglected until now.

Lastly, we have a more meaningful footer, specifically in two ways. One thing is that you can now contribute to Resource Pile, send in a resource, write a post, anything. If you’re launching a new site, tell us, and we’ll link you if it’s good. The other thing is a nice space for ‘friends’, non sponsored ‘ads’ for other blogs we like and might exchange links with. If you’re interested in adding your blog, contact us about it.

So there it is…

That’s Resource Pile version 2.0, currently all you’ve seen is the design change, feed change, twitter account and other little bits. New and improved content is coming soon. I hope with our revamped Resource Pile we can expand further than we have so far. Oh, there’s going to be more freebies too :)