I have just setup a RevebNation.com account for my Band Make Joy Cry and have this awesome music player widget to spread the word. Check out the tunes. Hope you like them. You can find more info @ www.reverbnation.com/makejoycry . I plan to do a review of ReverbNation in the near fure as I am so impressed with their tools and services.

Anyway what I’m getting at is we all get tired of recreating existing logos and artwork. “Grunt work” for lack of a better term. I have compiled a list of some resources I’ve gathered over time that have been extremely valuable to me when I am presented with a JOB. My Swiss Army Design Tool Box.

Brand Logos

I always come across clients who just can’t seem to come up with a usable logo for their company. Here are some links to some great resources for major brand logos.

www.brandsoftheworld.com

Best brands of the World is my first “go to” place for vector logos of popular brands.

Here are a few more links to some of the better free vector logo sites that have come in handy.

www.sharealogo.com

www.allthelogos.com

www.allfreelogo.com

www.logozu.com

www.vectorportal.com

www.epslogos.net

Military Logos

I have done many jobs for the military and there is nothing less fun than recreating a detailed military seal. Here are two resources for digging up military artwork.

www.af.mil/art/

www.defenselink.mil/multimedia/web_graphics/

Font Matching

How many times do you get a job where you have to recreate artwork or a logo into a vector format but you can’t quite find the font. You recognize it…. You’ve seen it before…… BUT the name just won’t come to you. When I get stuck in this jam I always resort to What the Font @ MyFonts.com. What the Font gives you the ability to upload a jpg of your font (must be somewhat clean and free from busy backgrounds) and it will perform a font recognition check. It will spit out a list of possibilities that are usually right on the money. WTF doesn’t always get it right but it will definitely keep you from wasting precious hours of your life searching through a font library.

What the Font

www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont

Stock Product Photography

I do quite a few layouts for coupons and coupon dispensers. I always end up needing an image quickly to meet a deadline. The two links below are great resources for FREE high resolution product shots and logos from thousands of brands.

www.imagecorporate.com

www.kwikeesystems.com

Stock Photography

Often the client does not have any photography for their project and I need to dig up some good stock photos for their project. My resources vary depending on the budget for the JOB. There are many stock photo sites out there to choose from ranging from FREE to not so free and everywhere in between. Here are a few of my got to links.

www.gettyimages.com (Not so free but great stuff)

www.istock.com (great community driven stock site. Very reasonable pricing)

www.sxc.hu (Quality varies but it’s FREE)

Well there it is. My first real post and a taste of my favorite resource links. I always advise that designers keep a well organized list of bookmarks to keep their resources handy. They are just one more tool among the many we use every day.

Feel free to share some of yours in the comments below.

I have to say that over the past several years there have not been many bands that have really gotten my juices flowin. Now, I like a lot of new bands but none have earned that status of “Can’t take it outta the CD player for a month!”. This is a level reserved for the most inspiring albums (do we still call them albums) in my collection.

I have been a fan of the band Porcupine Tree for about the past two years. I discovered them after reading an interview with Alex Lifeson of RUSH in Guitar World Magazine. He made a few very flattering comments about PT and I just had to hear what they were all about.

I picked up the album “Dead Wing” and was hooked. I was so surprised to find out about lengthy discography they have and just how talented of a band they are.

Fast-forward to this year. I had the pleasure of seeing Porcupine Tree play at The House of Blues in Cleveland last month with Kings-X and they blew me away. A modern day Pink Floyd is my quickest description of them. The live show was flawless.

However, they played most of the set from a new album that was coming out like that day or something so I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the new songs. It didn’t matter. I loved it anyway and finally picked up the album “The Incident” last week. It has not come out of my CD player since!

So if you’re into something a little progressive and a bit surreal but a lot dynamic. I highly recommend this disc.

Check it out.
http://www.porcupinetree.com

My musical outlet Make Joy Cry has been in the studio recording some tunes in recent months and we are finally to the mixing stages of the project. All is sounding great and we are so pumped to let everyone here what we’ve been up to. We actually currently have enough songs written for a full CD but we wanted to get our feet wet first and see how it went.

Ron Pease has been helping us produce the songs. He has made us sound like gods and we haven’t even mixed yet. You can be sure that once we get our final mixes I will be posting an update here and everywhere the interweb will let me.

Be sure to go vote for my band Make Joy Cry in this years Battle for X-Fest. You can vote once a day until May5th at Noonish.

Vote at:

http://www.wxeg.com