So sometimes I think it is rough keeping up with this blogging business, but I often am shooting emails off to people that are filled with little notes on design related things that I could easily blog about. I still have to collect my thoughts on Thailand, so that is forthcoming, but for now I want to express my gratitude for several tutorial websites.

I never really thought  much about tutorials, well actually I despised them. Why would I want to have a final product identical to the 20 other kids in my class where the professor already worked out the kinks?  Where was the exploration and serendipitous discovery?  Thanks to Google Reader, I’ve been rabidly devouring feeds from what will soon be 100+ blogs some of which have mentioned tutorials at other sites, which held only a passing interest.

However, today while I was brainstorming how to add some visual interest to a website for work, I had a vague recollection of a post at PSDTUTS that could be useful for visualizing the abstract concept of communication. By using the tutorial as a general guide, I was able to avoid the cookie cutter syndrome I so loathed in the past.  So with this new discovery of the world of online design tutorials my summer evenings will be a bit more educational.

The result of my first tutorial use:

Other useful sites worth a note:

NETTUTS – Almost exactly like PSDTUTS, except for web development

Veerle’s Blog – Recommended to me by my friend Jon Bolden for her web tips, but also quite useful when it comes to doing more with Adobe programs

Every Stock Photo – Mentioned in one of the PSDTUTS tutorials, it is essentially a search engine of free stock images from Stock.XCHNG, Flickr Creative Commons, MorgueFile and other similar imaging sites