The Envato marketplaces, including FlashDen, ThemeForest, GraphicRiver, AudioJungle, and VideoHive,  just started a Free File of the month program. The files they’re giving away are built by pros and reviewed by pros just like everything they sell at Envato. Unlike most “free” things, there are no strings attached. You don’t even need to sign up if you don’t want to. All the files are great, but the FlashDen and VideoHive files are truely amazing. These will be great to have just in case the right project pops up.

Thanks Envato and thanks to all the hard working authors who are giving their files away for free!

The free files include:

FlashDen – Simple and elegant Flash image gallery with source and instructions included. Download
ThemeForest – Clean business template built in HTML. Download
GraphicRiver – Button and dropdown graphics. Download
AudioJungle – Audio logo pack. Download
VideoHive – I don’t know how to describe it. You just need to check it out and download it.

I just found a fantastic post by Scott Wills on FlashDen’s blog talking about the reasons why a person buys stock. The article talks specifically about Flash, but it applies to all stock.  He says “Perhaps a customer is a Flash-savvy Web designer who knows very little about coding at all, or perhaps there’s a customer who is simply tight on time and would rather invest a little money into an existing file on FlashDen in order to save time and avoid re-inventing the wheel.” Regardless of your specific reasoning for buying stock, you’re more than likely a design professional.

As professionals, you need to stay on top of your game. You need to be the best of the best and know how to use the latest and greatest technology. Scott wrote specifically about the hesitation most Flash developers are having about switching from as2 to as3. They’ll give a lot of reasons, but in short it’s because it’s hard to learn new things. I hate to be harsh, but if you don’t get on the train, you’re going to miss it. This applies to all of you designers! Those of you who are already on the train, don’t think this is the end of your journey.

So, you know you have to learn, but where do you start? I’ve seen a thousand tutorials and there aren’t too many I’d suggest you use. Just because it shows you how to  make something work doesn’t mean you should do it that way. I would really suggest using sites that are considered authorities on the subject. If you’re willing to spend some money, I’d suggest lynda.com for just about any design related subject. Their books and video tutorials are, in my opinion, some of the best out there.  AdobeTV isn’t the easiest site in the word to navigate, but there are some fantastic tutorials over there. Another excellent option is the TutsPlus series of sites that includes FlashTuts, AETuts, PSDTuts, and several others. Here are some really great tutorials for each subject:

Flash
Flash “Decals”

Learning as3 Part 1
Learning as3 Part 2
Learning as3 Part 3
Learning as3 Part 4

Vector
Characters with character

PSD
Creating stains
Creating dark, surreal illustrations

After Effects
Light painting effect

Web
Javascript preloader

A better login system
5 ways to write better css

Previous Free Images That are Still Free:

Free Vectors:

Most clients seem to have a pretty clear idea of what they want you to design. Other clients come to you with nothing more than a business name and high expectations. Coming up with a design idea can be the most difficult step in the process, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the client’s industry. I recently had a forex trader ask me to build him a website. He didn’t have any input, he just wanted “something cool.”

A very common mistake among designers is being more concerned with making the website itself cool rather than making the website fit the product. Emmanuel Rouzic’s photography portfolio is a great example of what should be done. The subject is photography and 99% of the interface is photography. They made the content the interface and did a good enough job of it to win an fwa award (another great source of inspiration by the way)! Your design must fit your content.

Unfortunately, not everything is as visually obvious as photography. Thinking of a visual way to express non-visual concepts is a bit tougher. That’s where stock photography websites come into play. First, I like to get a whole series of keywords associated with the design I’m creating and then plug them into a stock website’s search. I could only think of two or three ways to visually represent currency trading, but istock came up with hundreds. They have enough authors that at least a few of them will be familiar with the industry you’re designing for. I didn’t end up using any of the images I found, but it was an integral step in my design process.  The final product was a direct result of inspiration I received from my searches.

Less than two years ago the real estate market was booming. With all the money Realtors were bringing in, dropping a couple thousand dollars on a custom website made sense. With the change in the market, all that is over. Whether you’re a Realtor yourself or designing for a Realtor, your budget is probably tight.

Rich or broke, Realtors need a logo, business card, fliers, and a website. Using stock files is a fantastic way to get professional -looking design done inexpensively. Even with stock, a designer may still be necessary, but it will always be cheaper than custom work. Many real estate offices employ an in-house designer, who may be the perfect person to turn a couple pieces of stock into a quality design for little to no cost.

Having an MLS (Multiple Listing Service) search on a Realtor’s website is essential. If buyers can’t find homes on the site, it might as well just be a one page business card website.  There are some great real estate web templates out there for under $50, but they won’t have the MLS automatically integrated into them. Unfortunately there isn’t one comprehensive MLS system – they’re all regional and work independently of each other. Usually an MLS search page can be added into the site using an iframe (basically a page within a page). This is something that might need to be done by a designer.

Here are a bunch of great real estate-related stock photos, websites, and vectors:

Web Templates:

Images:

Flash:

Previous Free Images That are Still Free:

Free Vectors:

Free Videos:

Click here to download.

Click here to download.

Click here to download.

Chances are that if you are on a normal stock photography website and you search “Paris Hilton”, all you are going to find is a hotel in France. Most stock photo and video websites don’t sell images of celebrities, athletes, politicians, or anyone else famous.

Be Careful
When you buy an image from most stock websites, you can use the image pretty much however you want. This is not the case when buying a photo of a famous person! Let’s say you run a blog all about the latest and greatest sports news and you want to do an article on former UFC champ Chuck Liddell. You can’t just search Google, find your favorite picture of him and slap it on your site. If you do, it is highly likely the license owner of that image will come after you. If you think the consequences for using a famous person’s image on your website is bad, you should see what happens to people who use unauthorized images of celebs in fliers promoting their products. This is a dangerous road that you shouldn’t walk down. Each license is different so read them very carefully before you buy.

How to get these Images
You have three main options: You can camp outside Brittany Spears’ house with a camera, you can buy million dollar photos directly from the paparazzi, or you can buy them from a stock website like Getty Images. This isn’t like buying regular stock images like you may be used to. They typically won’t let you even see the price until you have signed up, logged in, and answered 20 questions about yourself and how you will be using the image. Some normal questions include:

How will it be used?
Where will it be used?
What resolution will the final product be?
Will it be on the homepage or a subpage?
How many prints will there be?
What country will it be seen in?
What is the industry of the product you are promoting?
How long will the image stay up?

Pricing
Pricing for celebrity images can vary greatly depending on popularity of figure, quality of the image, and the million questions they will ask you regarding the use. Don’t assume that because it is “stock” it is going to be cheap. Even if you are just using it for your blog, these images can cost hundreds of dollars. For example I looked up the price of an image of Angelina Jolie walking up a hill in Afghanistan. She is far away and barely recognizable. I selected that it would be used for an inside page of a magazine taking up an eighth of the page, circulated to half a million people, for just one week and the price was $273.

This week’s free iStock image:

Previous Free Images That are Still Free:

Free Vectors:

Free Videos:

Click here to download.

Click here to download.

Click here to download.