When working with and setting up your website you will need to decide on a hosting provider. Hopefully the two of you will have a happy relationship but make sure that you have an understanding of everything involved before agreeing to a plan.

This month I focused on quality HTML and CSS advice. At the end of this roundup is a featured sites list which is chock full of cool new sites I’ve found this month. I hope you folks enjoy this month’s best of the design community!

It’s time once again for that collaborative effort between the Arbenting team and the infamous MIB! This time we wanted to do something a bit different for the Photoshop freebie than we usually do, so Angie struck brainstorming gold and mined through the web to unearth some old time royalty free map images to age and weather into a mighty fine brush pack.

Finding Photoshop brushes on the internet isn’t hard; there are loads and loads available. Finding ones that are good quality and suited to your needs is rather more difficult. Fear not! We’ve done the hard work for you by trawling through literally hundreds and hundreds of examples, to find the best brushes available today.

These high resolution stone textures are of the stone siding on the lighthouse at Old Fort Niagara. The park is nestled on Lake Ontario and has all kinds of great places to visit, look around and photograph. I love the weathered stone and moss growing along some of the rock. I hope you find some cool uses for these. Enjoy!

Some of you may have noticed that MyInkBlog was down the last couple of days. Unfortunately, when I switched hosts from StartLogic to the awesome guys at Eleven2 I wasn’t able to transfer the domain name as well. So when I canceled my StartLogic account I had no way of knowing that my domain name was about to expire.

First in the post, we are going to point you to a few different tutorials that will teach you how to do a variety of 3d typographical effects to incorporate into your work. Then we are going to show you some beautiful examples of 3D typography to inspire you into using your newly learned techniques.

Last week I showcased a plethora of logos with clever typography. Of course a logo isn’t only about great typography, many of the most iconic ones feature a clever mark or symbol, so I decided to extend this series. I hope you enjoy the clever logos that follow!

I love logos! They encompass so much branding identity into one tiny graphic. They are incredibly difficult to create, but when done correctly, they stand the test of time.

A lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to create your own photoshop brushes. If you find yourself drawing the same elements over and over you can save a lot of time by creating a brush of that particular element.

Psychologists will tell you that people are either right or left-brained dominate. When you look at the inherent differences between a designer and a developer this can make for an intriguing discussion.

Aaron Irizarry is a hard-working, fun-loving, and super helpful member of the design community. He runs This is Aaron’s Life and a host of other design related sites. I’ve been privileged to get to know him a little better the last couple weeks. The other day, he was kind enough to agree to this interview, check out his thoughtful responses.