Part 2 is here! Continuing last weeks post that brought you 15 free resources for designers, here we are again with yet ANOTHER 15 free resources to keep you moving along in your quest to be the best (that rhymes) designer you can be.
Without further ado, let’s begin (in no particular order, as always):
A great icon pack for your designs that will definitely give it a bit of extra visual flair.
Happy Halloween everybody!
Instead of passing out candy this year, we are switching things up a bit by passing out the Internet equivalent – discounts! Just use the coupon code CASPER09 to receive 10% OFF every order. Hurry though – this special only lasts Friday October 30th through Sunday November 1st.
Also, as a little bonus, here’s the winner of ‘Best Halloween Costume’ in the Midphase office:
However, let’s not forget the employees working from home today…even they partake in Halloween madness!
The man behind the mask (and most likely your nightmares, after the above):
Make sure you let him know how awesome his costume is in the comments 
Feel free to post your own as well!
Until next time…
Noah
Who doesn’t love something free? In this post, I’ll be pointing you in the direction of over 15 FREE resources for all the aspiring designers out there. The beauty of these resources (besides being free of course!) is that they are both great time savers for those that have to create quick mock ups day in and day out, as well as a good way to learn if you are a novice.
Without further ado, here’s my handpicked list of free design resources, in no particular order!
960px Photoshop Grid Template
This is an invaluable resource for checking to make sure that your designs are grid-based for ease of use/visual clarity.
In: Tips and Tutorials| Web Design
Posted on Oct 8, 2009
If you are a designer, you know the feeling – staring at a blank canvas in Photoshop (or whatever your software of choice may be) and wondering to yourself “where on Earth do I start?”. Designers block can be a very frustrating thing. However, don’t fret – this is where we come in to save the day.
We’ve compiled a list of what we consider to be the quintessential places to turn when you are clean out of ideas. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you’re sure to find something worthwhile.
Without further ado, here we go (in no particular order):
If you want to find a great resource for lists, you can’t go wrong with Vandelay Design Blog. There’s no shortage of unique and in-depth lists to get you out of any creative rut you may find yourself in.
If you move in tech circles or read a lot of blogs you’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone in the modern world now uses Twitter, and if they don’t, then they’re not really a part of the Internet.
Stats published earlier this year show that Twitter has grown a phenomenal 1,384% between Feb 08 and Feb 09. But, is this a fair reflection of the Internet population, or is Twitter the reserve of nerds and geeks?
I used to work for a BIG company that had far too many meetings. So, to pass the time, we used to play a game called buzzword bingo.
While writing my post on the death of the meta tag, I was struck by just how many buzzwords there are in SEO (search engine optimization). I plan to write a series of SEO guides for beginners on the Midphase blog, so I thought it might be useful to start by introducing some of the terms.
It’s an exciting time here at Midphase. First, we rolled out our new vastly improved website design, then we launched a massive 50% off server promotion. Now, we are very proud to announce that we have launched our new Hosted Exchange email hosting product!
Midphase Hosted Exchange is quite an exciting concept. Businesses large and small can now enjoy the benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 without the tremendous upfront investment costs or management overheads. This is a very unique product, and one that we know will vastly improve the efficiency of our customers and their businesses.
I spotted on twitter last night an official announcement from Google that people in the SEO community had long suspected: Google no longer use the meta keywords tag in web search.
A meta tag is a line of HTML code that sits in the <header> section of your web page and provides information to search engine spiders and web browsers about the contents of your webpage. Different meta tags tell the browser or spider different things, it might be whether the web page is written in English or French, who wrote the page, or by what rules the browser should interpret or render the page.
In the early days of the Internet when search bots were less sophisticated, meta-tags played a really important role in how search engine spiders searched your website and where they decided to rank you in the search engine results page. Search engine spiders couldn’t really decipher and prioritise all your web page content (as they do now), so were helped out by two tags in particular:
Read the rest of this entry »
I got linked to an interesting article on Typophile.com today and thought it’d be good to share 
In the article Miha shows off his use of ninja skills and false color to improve the readability of favicons, if you’re into design or typography you can check out the full article at: http://typophile.com/node/60577
If you don’t know what a favicon is, simply put it’s the little icon that appears when you visit certain websites to the left of your browsers address bar. If your website has a favicon and its bookmarked, your favicon will also appear in the users bookmarks – quickly identifying the bookmark as your website & helping it to stand out..
The nerds have been busy at Midphase towers. Not only have we updated our range of server hosting and server management upgrades, but we’re also running a massive 50% off promotion to celebrate.
The 50% off offer is really simple and there are no hidden costs, minimum contracts, or strings attached. Simply put we’re offering 50% off all SoftLayer dedicated servers and all server management upgrades for the first month.
We think we’ve got some of most competitive dedicated servers in the market, and, while the prices are cheap, it doesn’t mean you’re sacrificing on quality. We’ve taken great care to put together the best hardware and providers, and, of course, all servers come with their own dedicated SLA.
SoftLayer is a true global provider, with state of the art datacenters and a massive robust network. This is probably the most price efficient way to experience premium dedicated servers and test drive our offering.
This offer is strictly limited (until the boss says stop). For further information, contact our sales team at 1-866-MIDPHASE.
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tom
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