While I absolutely adore my Adobe Creative Suite 4, its purchase left my pocketbook quite empty. I wish I could use it for everything, but sometimes I just need to make a spreadsheet... or attempt to organize my thoughts. Luckily I've found many great free resources that make my life at least a little bit easier.
OpenOffice
The first, and most powerful free resource I wholeheartedly endorse is OpenOffice. I successfully rid my MacBook Pro of all things Microsoft, including Office, late last year. But I only did so after testing all of the common functions I'd be using in OpenOffice. I was impressed. In fact, I think it works better—no issues with conversion or saving in different formats, and it hasn't crashed my computer. They also offer tons of extensions and templates to customize your experience. Try it!
960 Grid System
We use a grid for print design, so why not on the web? It really does make things move faster.
Evernote
I'm still trying this out as a possible solution to my listmaking addiction, but I'm not giving up on making my own paper planner.
dafont
This is a huge, searchable emporium of free fonts and dingbats. While I can't advocate using most of the typefaces found here, they have a nice selection of symbols and theme-specific fonts.
Brusheezy
Like their tagline says, stupid name. But the free Photoshop brushes come in handy when you're designing on a tight budget.
Do you have any free resources you'd like to share?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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Thanks for sharing the free resources. My favorite free resource of the year--so far--has been Primo PDF. http://www.primopdf.com/ This is a free way to convert documents to PDF. It's a pretty simple program that somehow works through your print options, but it has been all that needed and saved me from buying the expensive Adobe version. Open Office might have this function too, I'm just pretty set in my ways with Microsoft.
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