Tutorialized Tutorials

Tutorialized is packed full of good old fashioned, F1 help. Learn how to make hair in Illustrator, or how to get started in Adobe Premiere. There are technical and business tutorials there too, but I'm mostly interested in the free online graphic design education I can give myself. Maybe you simply want to learn more about making animated banners in Flash. Whatever the reason, if you can see past the many blinking ads, this handy web site is your one-stop shopping for freebie online learning.

XML-Sitemaps for Web Page Ranking

Moving right along... The photo in the last fascinating post about the dinosaur discovery looks more like something my dog makes, that I must pick up and dispose of. Time now for a little web technology...

My page ranking had slipped a point, and I am looking for help. The best remedy, I've found, is to actually post every day, but if you've ever tried writing 70-100 words to write, EVERY day, you know it's not that easy.

I realized I needed to submit an XML sitemap for the robots to better crawl my site. I'm a so-so at coding, so for that reason, I sought out an XML sitemap generator at XML-Sitemaps.com. Just plug in the code, and away it goes, generating an XML map to all your pages. Download the new file, then upload it into your site's root folder, and submit it to Google's Webmaster Tools... Voilà! (I'll let you know how my page ranking turns out).

Play With Color

Does your portfolio boast color? If color is the favorite part of your designer day, you will enjoy playing with color combos at kuler (get it? ... kuler... color...), one of Adobe's online toys for creative folks like myself. If you want to base your colors on a photo, you may do so by uploading it. The tool automatically suggests a color theme, but you can edit that, as you see fit. You need to log in, if you actually want to save any of your color sets.

Color Scheme Tool

Are you one of those people who just doesn't have a natural eye for color? If so, check out this color tool, which provides you with "Color Wheel", "Color Harmonies", and "Suggested Colors". It's ColorSchemer Studio, and you can try the freebie online version of the tool, right here. The paid version (about $50) also includes a "Color Blindness Simulator" and "Convert to nearest WebSafe or WebSmart color". More color tools to come.

Designer's Toolbox

Designers' Toolbox is THE graphic designer's resource. It contains all things designer: names of various folds for brochures, HTML special characters, proof reading marks, a Lorem Ipsum generator, and so on (too much info to list in this small space). They make their money with the store, which sells handy templates (like forms or client contracts), portfolio hosting, and vector maps of this entire planet.

If it's designer info that you need, they've got it--or almost. I am still waiting for a metric/imperial unit converter... although they are readily available elsewhere on the (just Google the term).

Here's a handy dandy little tool for for the eager CSS learner: it's CSS Zen Garden... a series of CSS templates (read: cheat sheets), that allow you to completely alter the look and feel of a web site, by simply changing the style sheet. Examples are downloadable... Once again, the word "clever" comes to mind.