Heather Kant's Graphic Design Tools

I'm sure every designer has their little secrets.  I thought I'd share some of mine.  [If you have any other cool sites, tips, shortcuts, or anything please feel free to comment me for others to read]

1. Playlist.com, you cannot get through any day with out some music.  There is the coolest site that lets you basically pick your own tunes and it puts it in a playlist for you.  You can get it embedded and then you can put it on your website for easy access for you and your friends. Mine : >Heather Radio<
2. What The Font: This is the coolest website that can help you find that crazy mystery font you are looking for.  It has cut my time in 1/2 many times.
3. Lorem Ipsum: Instead of making up silly words to fill your mockup artwork forms.  Just come here and get some Lorem ipsum.  From a far it looks like real words.  WONDERFUL TRICK. (Thanks to Scott for showing me the Lorem Ipsum generator website)
   
4. Best Brands of the World - Vector Logos: Are you ever doing artwork for a client and they do not have the correct logo, or a high resolution logo? Well Come to this site! It has FREE VECTOR logo downloads.  It wont have every logo you will need, but it will sure help you out. My Friend Brooke sent me to this site > Love it!
   
5. SeekLogo: Here is another vector logo download site!
6. Illustrator Tip: Do you ever have a vector document from a client and the text isn't outlined? Grrrr! Then you find out you don't have the font!? Well, my friend Anna found a website (I don't have the link-sorry bout that) were you can place the artwork in illustrator do some moves and then BAM your text is outlined.  

      Here are the Steps:

• Place your desired document into Illustrator - File > Place
• Now flatten your transparency - Object > Flatten Transparency and then click Convert to outlines.
• Your wish is my command! Now your text is outlined!!! No more emailing clients back asking for outlined text or asking for the actual text file.  Whew! 

Here are some commonly used characters you can copy paste.  I will also put the fast key shortcuts next to them.

Alt + 0169 = ©
Alt + 0162 = ¢
Alt + 0149 = •
Alt + 0153 = ™
Alt + 0174 = ®
Alt + 0177 = ±


I may add more helpful tid-bits shortly.  I hope some of these tips will help you! Let me know if you can think of anything else.


MORE LINKS:
Free Fonts: http://www.sitetoolcenter.com/download-free-fonts/page14.php
Vector & Photoshop Graphics: 
http://qvectors.net
http://www.freevectordownload.com
http://dryicons.com/free-graphics/
http://www.psdgraphics.com/
Awesome backgrounds: http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/downloads/date/any/